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[ Inaudible Discussion ]
>> Okay, thank you for being here today.
My name is Paul Brigner, I'm the Regional Bureau Director
of North America for the Internet Society.
And this is the 2012 New York INET
and we have a nice crowd here,
but we have a very nice crowd online, too.
So, everything we do today is about getting your input and--
as well as getting input from our remote channel.
I just want to first welcome you all, thank you for being here.
I've got a couple of thank yous I have to say.
I've had some great support from the New York Chapter
in doing these events.
We've worked together on this for a long time now,
and in particular, David Solomonoff as the president,
he deserves some credit for this
and also Joly MacFie deserves a lot of credit
because he helped publicized this event.
I need to thank our ISOC staff
in particular Nicole is here, Nicole Armstrong.
She did a great work in helping organize this event.
So-- And the New York Law School,
'cause this is an awesome venue for this event.
So that's that.
So we're here for an INET, but I think it's--
whenever an event for the Internet Society,
I always like to start off by making sure that everyone knows
who we are and what our mission is,
so let me just read that to you briefly.
We are a global nonprofit organization dedicated
to ensuring the open development, evolution,
and use of the benefit for all people around the world.
Since 1992, ISOC has served as a global clearinghouse
for technically sound, unbiased information about the internet
as an educator, and as a focal point
for a broad-based community of interest engaged
in internet-related initiatives around the world.
We provide the organizational home
for the Internet Engineering Task Force,
the Internet Architecture Board,
and the Internet Research Task Force.
As well, we just launched the Internet Hall of Fame this year.
So there're a lot of good things going on at the Internet Society
and if you are not a member and I suspect all of you are,
but if you are not, I highly encourage you to join
because you will be supporting the internet
and events like this.
So please do so.
There's free membership option, so there--
really, there's no reason not to join
if you're a believer in this initiative.
See, I also wanted to mention that we have more
than 55,000 members around the world and 90 chapters
over 130 organizational members.
So we are very active globally.
Speaking of our activities around the world,
we actually are having another INET in Singapore, tomorrow
and the next day, and I thought that was kind of interesting
to mention because that might be more
of a characteristic type of INET that we have.
I just want to mention that real quick.
I thought the topic was kind of interesting.
It's about SoLoMo.
And it's the first I've heard this acronym,
but it's about social, local,
and mobile highlighting the convergence of social media,
location-aware technology and mobile devices.
So it gives you an idea of what we might do at some INETs.
And I think that this INET is particularly interesting
because it's a little different than covering a broad topic.
It's covering digital content as an issue, but in particular,
it's covering the copyright alert system
which is a very interesting system that is launching soon.
We're going to learn all about it today.
So I'm not even going to try to describe it to you
because I would probably get it wrong
and we have all the experts here who are going
to tell us exactly what it is.
But it is unprecedented to have internet service providers,
content providers, and others working together
to help the internet content be delivered in a way
that hopefully is beneficial to the internet ecosystem,
and that's what we're going to learn and be able
to possibly determine for ourselves.
So, as a personal note,
I like to address difficult questions head on.
We're addressing some difficult questions here today.
But, personally, I'm very interested
in this topic as well.
I think a lot of you know that I have a background
of having worked Verizon as well
as the Motion Picture Association of America and now
at the Internet Society.
So, I kind of blend a lot of the different topics
that are being discussed today and I want
to make it clear that, well, this is a topic
that is very much of interest in me.
The Internet Society does not have a position
on the Copyright Alert System.
So we are also not encouraged by any of the organizations here
to do this event as a service to them.
We are doing this is a service to the internet community.
And first and foremost, we're doing it at the encouragement
of our New York City Chapter.
So, if there's any question about that,
I hope that that puts that to rest because this is
about keeping you informed and making sure
that when there is a significant activity that's happening
on the internet, we know what it is and we know what kind
of effect it's going to have.
So with that, I would like to invite David Solomonoff,
the president of the New York Chapter to come up
and say a few comments to help kick us off, so David.
>> Thank you.
[ Pause ]
Hi, I'm David Solomonoff,
President of the Internet Society New York Chapter.
I'd like to welcome everybody here
to the INET New York Open Forum on the Copyright Alert System.
Sometimes it's called the "Six Strikes" Program
which will kick off on November 28th.
Internet access is a necessity of modern life and is being seen
as a human right at some countries now,
that's obviously the trend.
Intellectual property has become an economic asset that is
at least or more valuable than physical property.
So in this context,
where strictly removing internet access for a person
as punishment for copyright infringement is analogous
to the loss of freedom due to incarceration.
Therefore, an internet copyright enforcement regimen
that includes restricting
or blocking internet access must be effective and minimize harm.
To be effective, it must provide equal protection for-- to all.
So not only protect big media or contact creators
of media companies, but other contact creators
with more limited financial
and legal resources must be protected as well.
Also contact creators who choose to share their works
with specific requirements and restrictions
on the reuse must also be protected.
So open source software developers
or creative content license, you know, artistic works
that require specific types
of attribution although they are allowed to be shared,
that type of, you know, license must be enforced as well.
It's necessary to minimize harm.
So we must assume innocence until guilt is proven
and as we do in our current legal system,
we must have due process, we must provide adequate means
of redress including recompense of damage caused
by false accusations of copyrighting infringement.
But some types of loss, damage,
injury or even death may be impossible to compensate
or if a species or abusive accusation
of infringement cause even a brief delay in the dissemination
of time-sensitive information.
So examples would be a whistleblower,
warning of negligence,
an infrastructure maintenance before a storm,
a political dissident piloting a mass protester,
warning of possible voter fraud before an election,
the failure
of internet-connected burglar alarms, fire alarms,
and medical devices,
time-sensitive financial transactions
which cannot be completed in a timely manner.
The few accusation
for infringement must also not have a chilling effect
on innovation or free expression including fair reviews,
[inaudible], transformative creative use
such as mash-ups, remixes and so forth.
So today, we're going to have a multistakeholder dialogue
about these issues which includes media companies, ISPs,
internets, civil liberties activists
that determine how the Copyright Alert System meets its
requirements and if it doesn't,
how it could be changed to do so.
Thank you.
>> Thank you very much David, appreciate that.
So, I have a big favor to ask you.
We already have a large group
of people online watching right now.
But if you're online in the room and--
for those of you that are online, please take a moment
to tweet for us and let others know
that this event is happening.
If you're trying to get on the internet here in the room,
there is a password that--
username-password is visitor, visitor, okay?
So that would get you on.
By the way, since we're talking about in the room logistics,
we do a lot of input from the room
but when you push the buttons for the microphone,
you have to push it to speak and then you have
to push it to turn it off.
Okay, because if you do not turn it off,
then the next person can't activate their microphone.
All right?
All right, so our hashtag for today is INETNY or Copyright.
So please use those hashtags.
We are having a back channel question system that's available
for you to either submit questions or to vote up
and down questions which is that inetny.backchan.nl,
so it's backchannel, B-A-C-K-C-H-A-N- dot N-L.
And finally, when you do tweet, make sure you put
in the livestream video which is bit.ly/isoctv,
B-I-T dot L-Y slash ISOCTV.
So enough of that, I would like to now turnover
to my colleague Konstantinos Komaitis.
He came all the way from Geneva.
He is part of our public policy team at Internet Society
and he is going to talk a little bit about some of our--
he's going to frame, I should say,
some of the public policy issues that are going
to be addressed here and I think
that will be very helpful to us all.
So Konstantinos.
>> Thank you Paul and good afternoon to all of you.
So in 2009, France introduced HADOPI,
a law especially designed to carve online copyright piracy.
HADOPI was the first of a subsequent wave of legislation
across the world to take the extreme position
of disconnecting people from the internet,
essentially cutting them off
from what Former US President Bill Clinton has characterized
an integral part of economic, political and social life.
Since then, various jurisdictions
around the world have began to look into ways
to address copyright infringement,
the former of unauthorized downloading
of copyrighted materials through peer-to-peer networks.
What makes these laws interesting is
that although they all seek to address the same issue,
they do so at different degrees and levels.
Some, like HADOPI, are purely public in nature and have
to adhere to basic constitutional imperatives.
Others, like the self-regulatory system enforced by Eircom
in Ireland are-- take a more or less fair approach
and have been criticized
for liking the necessary constitutional
or other due process safeguards.
In fact, Frank La Rue, UN Rapporteur on Freedom
of Expression has frequently stated his distress by proposals
to disconnect users from internet access
if they violate intellectual property rights citing 3 strikes
law specifically and condemning such frameworks
as human rights violations.
All this indicate part
of the struggles the internet community has been facing
in trying to identify ways to address the tension that appears
to exist between intellectual property rights
and the way they are expressed in the internet space.
These, as we are all witnessing,
has turned out to be a much more difficult task than any
of us originally anticipated.
So at the one side of the spectrum, the content industry
in the form of producers and everyone else involved
in the process of creating content have--
are asserting that copyright infringement is having a
significant impact on business models and the economy.
Users in civil society, on the other hand,
have raised their voice
on the impact strict copyright regimes are having
on basic fundamental rights and civil liberties such as freedom
of expression, free speech, and due process.
Somewhere in the middle are technology companies
which have taken the view that laws, regulations,
and policies should not use the internet, its technologies
and platforms in order to cure copyright infringement.
Another approaches necessary they argue if the internet is
to continue to evolve organically.
In a similar vein, internet service providers have
so far resist legislative attempts that seek
to unconditionally turn them into supervisors of content,
but this resistant is always wearing thing--
is also wearing thing.
And so here we are, the unsuccessful attempt
of the United States to pass copyright legislation
in the form of SOPA and PIPA last year,
as well as the overwhelming rejection of ACTA
by the European Parliament in July manifested two things.
The first one was
that intellectual properties are unequivocally part
of a much larger discussion, a discussion
that necessitates the inclusion of everybody who is concerned
with or has vested interest on the internet.
The second was the traditional forms of legislations--
or legislation, regulations, directives, treaties,
conventions are not always best suited
to address the complexities
and particularities of copyright law.
Given these and seeking to address copyright piracy,
5 of the largest ISPs
in the United States have entered a memorandum
of understanding with trade groups representing major
copyright owners.
Among the various issues the MOU seeks to tackle,
it was also authorized the creation of the center
of copyright information, the body responsible
for the micromanagement of the copyright alert system.
Based on self-regulatory archetypes,
the copyright alert system is a privately-designed and a means
that enforcement mechanism
which will be incorporating the contractual agreement
between broadband providers and users.
One of the key characteristics and a key difference
of the copyright alert system is that it does not seek,
at least explicitly, as an end goal
to suspend users' internet connections,
thus cutting them off the network.
The Internet Society is generally in favor
of industry-based initiatives
to address various issues including those relating
to intellectual property.
A self-regulation refers to initiatives produced
and enforced by dependent bodies or trade associations.
We feel that such private entities could prove beneficial
in overseeing market participant actions
through different processes such as standard setting,
certification, monitoring, brand approval, warranties,
product evaluation and arbitration.
For self-regulatory mechanisms to be successful,
they should include standards for real consent, this way,
setting in motion and contractual matrix
of private regulation.
In cases where consent is not present,
public legal institutions are required to specify the criteria
that entitled private regulatory regimes
to acquiescence and immunity.
But ultimately, it is important to understand
that all initiatives based on self-regulation are expected
to operate under minimum standards
of justice and in fairness.
Rules consequential to private regulatory efforts should
provide equal opportunities to the distribution
of institution shares.
With this in mind, private regulation offers some notable
advantages in ensuring that the fundamental values
which normally are at stake in the construction
of cyberspace can be protected by allowing interested parties
to participate in the formation of rules and principles
that are not subject to the cumbersome nature
of traditional lawmaking.
As Professor Post accurately put it, we don't need a plan
but a multitude of plans from among
which individuals can choose and the market is most likely
to bring that plenitude to us.
In a much similar vein, Robert Pitofsky, a former chair
of the Federal Trade Commission,
referring to industry-led regulation enumerated a couple--
the following advantages.
Self-regulatory groups may establish efficient
product standards.
Private standards setting can lower the cost of production.
Private regulation helps consumers evaluate products
and services.
Self-regulation may detect contact
that is universally considered undesirable
but outside the purview of similar criminal law
and finally self-regulation is more prompt, flexible,
and effective than government regulation.
However, industry regulation has also some
significant disadvantages.
In particular, some scholars have challenged the legitimacy
of the authorities created to deal
with issues emanating from cyberspace.
Their main concern relates to the ability of such authorities
to create policy and enforce rules to the traditionally fall
within the democratic state.
Given this understanding, one of the most worrying aspects
of private regulation is arguably that many
of its advantages are based
on false premises in those criteria.
Amongst other things, private regulation may easily fail
to protect democratic values.
It can neglect basic standards of justice.
It is often less accountable compared
to traditional governmental rulemaking and because
of the internet, it is increasingly
and mostly inflicted through computer code
which by nature circumvents legal and political institutions
that ideally ensured just and democratic values.
On this basis, a consent of private regulation refers
to issues of accountability or it's like thereof
and to the fact that no mechanism be it governmental
or self-regulatory can be allowed to wave
around the imposition of duties of due process
and equal protection through the creation
of formally private intermediaries
for policy making.
Because of these challenges, the Internet Society believes
that all issues of policy related
to the internet should be deliberated and discussed
under multistakeholder framework.
Intellectual properties wants that issue.
The experience of SOPA,PIPA,
and ACTA have aided this understanding
and have manifested the need for electors, government,
civil society groups, businesses and the technical community
to be part of the wider collective discussion.
A discussion that seeks to find ways to address these issues
without affecting the internet and its underlying technologies
without sacrificing the existing rights
of intellectual property owners
or putting jeopardy hard-fought fundamental liberties.
This was essentially the message communicated
in 2005 during the World Summit on Information Society in Tunis
where heads of states considered it important
for all issues pertaining to the internet can be detached
from traditional rulemaking and to become part
of a new governance arrangement that is based on cooperation,
collaboration and partnership.
Under the Tunis agenda, internet governance is
to unambiguously be conducted
through a multistakeholder framework
where each stakeholder participates
on an equal footing offering different perspectives.
We feel that the Tunis agenda [inaudible] should constitute
the foundation and the basis
for all future policy work in the space.
And like Paul, I am very much waiting forward
to a robust discussion and to learn more
about this self-regulatory system.
Thank you very much.
>> Thank you Konstantinos.
So without any further delay,
I would like to invite our first moderator
to come up, Declan McCullagh.
He is the Chief Political Correspondent for CNET and he
and our other moderator Jeff Jarvis had been selected
because they are very vocal in their views,
they are very independent in their views,
and they always do a good job of informing internet community
about what's going on
and we appreciate their work so, Declan, thanks.
>> So hi and thanks for coming.
My name is Declan McCullagh.
I cover technology law public policy for CNET
and I've spent 10 years in DC and I'm out in the West Coast
and I've been covering copyrights for far too long
since I actually remember some
of the original digital millennium copyright activates
from the 1990s.
So we have 2 panels today
and this one is probably more of a descriptive one.
This is actually how the system works
and the next one we're going to hear from some advocacy groups.
There's-- Now, everyone up here likes the system.
Everyone in the next panel may not like it as much.
So I-- There's not going to be a whole lot
of internal dissension I suspect unless I do a really good job
in trying to provoke them.
There's-- Jill, I think it makes the most sense for you
to go first unless we have a strong preference otherwise
that you're going to be running this.
You already are running this.
So-- [Inaudible Remark] [laughter] In a few minutes,
[inaudible], I'm sorry.
How is this going to work at a high level?
Is it 6 strikes, 6 complaints
and then I get my internet connection hold
or is it something more benign than that?
>> You're just baiting me
with [inaudible] [Multiple Speakers][laughter] We have
to start there.
So hello, I am Jill Lesser.
I am the Executive Director of the Center
for Copyright Information, which was set up under the Memorandum
of Understanding to help manage the copyright alert system
and also develop an educational program
around copyright going forward.
Just a bit about my background because one
of the reasons why it's really interesting for me
to sit here is because I spent most of my career
on the internet side of policy and politics,
being the first policy director at AOL starting in 1996
when the Communications Decency Act was first introduced.
And then ended up at AOL Time Warner briefly
since that merger was only briefly in place trying to meet
in the middle between the content and the internet
or distribution brands of that large company and so I've been
around these issues for a long time and was intrigued
by a coming together around trying to find some solutions
in a narrow space around copyright issues and I am--
I know there is certainly lot of skepticism out there
but I am excited about what we're doing
and I think pleasantly surprised by how much work
and contemplation and commitment has gone
into this process from both sides.
So let me start by saying the copyright alert system in its--
you know, sort of where we are today.
So the MOU was announced in July of 2011 and we have been working
for just over 15 months for implementation
and the reason we've been working
for 15 months towards implementation is
because we primarily want to get this right and getting it right
for us means a couple of things.
It means number 1, trying to make sure
that we are using technical methodologies and approaches
that minimize the tagging of content that is not
in fact copyrighted and is not in fact being shared,
distributed over peer-to-peer networks
without proper authorization.
We also want to make sure that as the content owners are
out there looking for their content
and notifying the appropriate ISP as based
on internet protocol addresses that the ISPs
on the other side are appropriately and protecting--
while protecting privacy,
identifying the correct subscriber
and then passing these alerts on to those people,
onto the primary account holders and I think it's important
to note that our notices are going
to the primary account holders who may
or may not be the person engaged in the activity.
We are-- So first and foremost is putting in a set
of methodologies that minimize false positives and make sure
that we're getting to the right people.
The second thing and this really was something that came
out of our putting together a consumer advisory board
which was mandated in the MOU, but sort of having it come
to life has given us an enormous amount of ability
to really focus on what's important and that is to go
out in a research-based environment and talk
to consumers, you know.
What does copyright even mean?
Why do people regularly think it's fine to simply trade
in copyrighted material--
>> Let me cut you off there
because we have a good high level overview,
but now it's switch to for Hollywood view,
how about Ben from the MPAA.
How are you going to actually track down people who--
the users of these ISPs who are accused of violating copyright?
There's a third party company, MarkMonitor,
you're going outsource to them.
They're going to flag--
is a human going to review every instance of a complaint,
independently review or just sort of represent.
How is this going to work?
>> Well, I've-- thanks Declan for having us.
The methodologies-- although the copyright alert system
in the form that it's about to launch is new.
Really, the methodologies and the sort of means of enforcement
and notices are really not new.
Copyright owners, movie studies,
or record companies have been doing this for really
over a decade and at a very high level, what it means is--
what it entails is joining publicly-accessible peer-to-peer
networks and seeing what is in individual peers--
individual users shared folder
for which they voluntarily exposed to the world
by joining peer-to-peer networks.
You don't know their names but you know their IP addresses
and you know the files that they're sharing with the world.
From that, there are very--
I'm not going to go into great details
if all the stuff is publicly available through CCIs website,
but basically, there are methodologies for downloading
and verifying that the files are in the--
>> So then MarkMonitor connects to their shared folder,
downloads everything and then determines whether it's a
real copy?
Is that--
>> Not everything.
[Multiple Speakers] Is it going to do--
is it going to be like an MV5 hash.
Is it something like that?
>> Basically, yes.
They're now looking at--
>> It's a sha1 hash.
>> Close enough okay.
>> Yes, they're not looking with everything.
You know, the copyright owners who you are participating
in the system specified different files
that they're actually looking for.
Those who've been verified that they're actually are the files
through a combination of human and technical means.
At that point, the--
our monitoring service sense along what we referred
to as the copyright notice to the ISP.
The ISP then matches the IP address
with subscriber information and then they send what is known
as the copyright alert from the ISP to the individual user.
>> But Victoria, did you want to add anything?
I mean, is this the same system that you're going
to use MarkMonitor representing you as well and by you,
I mean the Recording Industry Association of America
and your member companies.
>> Yes, but do I have to turn this on first?
Or is it on already?
>> It sounds like it's on.
>> Yes, we are both MPAA and RIAA on behalf of our content,
members are using MarkMonitor.
The MarkMonitor system uses metadata
to additionally initially identify a file
that is publically available on the P-to-P network.
If it suspects that file is a copied file that's owned by one
of our member companies or the NDs or the-- my NDs on my side,
they will download the first instance of the file;
check it to make sure it is in fact all--
substantially all of the copyright issue.
In our case, they run it through Audible Magic,
what's called a type 3 monitoring through Audible Magic
and a print which checks the entire file
to make sure it matches on audio fingerprint basis
with the copyrighted work.
They take the hash value of that file and then they will check
for hashes on a subsequent basis and as I'm sure many
of you know, the sha1 hash is virtually unique
to each particular file.
>> So if I twiddle a bit, the whole purpose
of a hash algorithm is if I change one beat
in the file then the resulting hash is wildly different.
If-- So if I just change one bit of the file, if I'm a pirate
and I'm going throw up your hash protection feature.
>> That is absolutely right.
If you take the same CD in our case and rip it
on to different computers, the track that's
on the 2 the different computers,
the file will have a different hash.
>> And so then-- well, let's go in the counter measures
from the pirate's perspective later, but Ron, your at Fox,
I mean you love this system or do you really love this system?
[laughter] What's the answer?
>> Let's see, I sort of really love it.
[laughter] Actually, we-- as Ben alluded to,
we've been sending notices to ISPs as part
of commercial arrangements and otherwise for many, many years.
And so, we've developed these same methodologies
for identifying with a high degree of confidence to files
and at terms on which they will be forded
to the subscribers for many years.
Actually, the reason I said sort of really is
under those commercial arrangements, frankly,
we were allowed to send more files, more notices
to the individual ISPs and our share--
we haven't really talked about that yet,
but there's actually an allocated share
for I think it's divided by sectors, I recall,
between the movie studios and the record companies
and the other participants in the system.
So we're actually having to reduce our share of notices,
but in exchange, of course, we get a very broad adoption
across more ISPs, more content owners, the overall number
of notices sent by all the content owners will clearly be
higher under this system.
So, because it is primarily an educational system,
if there will be more education of consumers as a result
of this system, then our piecemeal approach afforded us
in [inaudible] for that reason, we are willing to accept
that fewer notices with regarding Fox movies
and TV shows will be sent.
>> Ron, can I get you to say
that the ISPs aren't doing enough because it wasn't--
maybe I can break up the system.
[laughter] But then it wasn't that long ago
that I remember Verizon was fighting content owners
in court.
This is before the DC circuit.
This was a DMCA turbocharged subpoena process.
Verizon was standing up, they said and the users liked it
so the privacy of their users and the content owners said,
"Come on Verizon, what are you doing?
Turn over the user information."
Should they be doing more, should it be like a 3 strikes--
I know it's not really a 6 strikes,
but are they not going far enough?
>> Well, I think that dispute is, maybe everyone's aware
of it, but just to briefly rely people or tell people to learn,
that then involved the subpoena provision on the DMCA
which was an effort for obtaining details for--
versus the filing lawsuits against the subscribers,
and Verizon obviously believed it was unconstitutional,
I believe, was their claim
and I think they prevailed, as I recall.
This is not about suing users at all.
This is a completely different system.
>> So if any users get sued, they can take that to court
and say, "Oh, this isn't supposed to be about suing."
Will, I mean, users ever be sued as a result?
>> I have no idea, but that seemed
that the system is not designed to produce lawsuits.
It's designed to produce education.
>> Well, I think we can say pretty confidently
that there would-- nobody will be sued as part of this system.
Suing anybody is not part of this system.
>> But, you don't need the system to sue them.
>> Of course.
[Multiple Speakers]
>> -- the DC Circuit did not strike
down old fashion john doe subpoenas, so those still exist.
>> And I don't think this system is going to make it any easier
for anyone to sue, so.
>> And nor will make it any more difficult, I suspect.
So let's refer to the sort of beginning of the process
in terms of how allegedly fringing files were going
to be identified.
Let's hear the other end of the process, Link from Verizon can--
when you get from Jill and her Center
for Copyright Information,
when you get a notice, how do you respond?
Are you going to do any due diligence, any checking
to see whether or not there's any evidence
of previous infringing activity?
How do you respond?
>> One of the aspects of the system that's important is
that we've built in a number of protections for consumers.
So if they'd get a notice and they believe
that it was incorrect, that they weren't doing anything wrong,
there is an appeals process built-in.
So no, we don't check this.
The copyright owners have done-- you know, it done--
looked at through system.
They've actually had an independent check for it
to make it sure it's exactly responsible.
>> Who did the independent check?
>> What was the name of the firm?
>> The Straw Scraper.
>> All right.
>> So, and the intent of that was
to make sure it was exactly responsible.
So no, we do not.
There-- in our case, it would be between four
and six notices will be sent out.
There's an education phase,
the first 2 notices will be education.
Basically, sending a notice to the customer saying that the--
there's been an allegation that you're doing
to some illegal activity with materials copyrighted.
And we also send a voice mail alert as well,
so it's not just an email, we also send them a voice--
>> But you're going to send a physical letter
to their billing address?
Or does it depend on maybe how far along you are
in the escalation?
>> Not in the first-- the first phase is email
and there's a voice mail alert.
Levels 3 and 4 are what we call the acknowledgment phase.
And this is where there is some kind of a pop-up.
We haven't designed all these yet, but there would be a pop-up
in this phase where it would actually say--
acknowledge that you've gotten this email, this--
>> So you-- you can't do anything else
until you get that pop-up?
You have to acknowledge it.
>> And understandably, part of what we're trying
to do here is educate people and also alert them
because there are cases where people are in group homes,
for example, and they could have one account
and 5 people are using it.
So, it's very possible that somebody is doing this
and the other people in the house don't know,
and somebody actually owns the account, and they're the ones
who were accountable for it.
[Inaudible Remark] Same thing in the family
where you'd have a mother or a father paying for the account,
the kids could be-- so.
And then there's level 5 and 6 which is the mitigation phase.
And in our case, what would happen there would be a
temporary speed reduction, 2 to 3 days speed reduction.
They would get-- be given a 14-day advance notice.
So keep in mind, this is after a long process of saying,
we've got repeated notices, you have acknowledged our pop-up,
which again, they could just click on and again
that could be somebody in the house
that didn't even have anything to do with it,
or could be somebody who did do it.
And then there's an arrive appeal as a result
in this last phase, where they can say, "Look, it's not me.
There's an independent arbitration firm that would--
that has been-- we're working with AAA
that would actually do--
>> What cost of the appeal, someone has to pay for it.
>> There'll be a 35-dollar filing fee
but it could be waived if they say they can't afford it and,
you know, obviously, if they want, they will get to pay that.
>> So there was a week-- I know your you don't work for AT&T,
I know there's a difference between the 2 companies,
but there was a leak to AT&T internal training manual
on the TorrentFreak.com, and it said that access to many
of the most frequently visited websites will be restricted
until-- during some of the upper phases of this.
Are you going to do the same thing?
I mean, does that like--
that's like a Pirate Bay restriction, right?
>> Ours is a speed reduction.
It's 2 to 3 days, so it doesn't last forever.
It last for a period of time.
>> The idea again is education,
letting them know what's going on, and that kind of--
with speed reduction, it's intended to get their notice,
get them to say is this something that happened or not.
And if it's not, then obviously, appeal it and say--
and we can work it out that way.
>> Fernando, maybe I can bring you into the discussion.
You're in Time Warner Cable, how is your response going
to be similar or different from Verizon
or this leaked AT&T internal training document?
>> I haven't seen the leaked document, but I can--
before I answer your question, I'm still struck by can
that kind of ends for your question, I'm still struck
by Konstantinos' opening remarks and appreciate, you know,
how you framed this because that was very profound and I want
to assure you that that's exactly the kind
of overall framing in terms of the seriousness of the issues
with which our internal conversations
about this project have taken place, and certainly
with the advice of the Consumer Advisory Board
that we have at CCI.
But to get to your question Declan,
each of the participating ISPs has a different approach
for this educational program, and ours is comparable
to Verizon's, but we have-- and so we have a notice phase
where we want to send notices--
2 notices to the primary account holder, an acknowledgment phase
where there has to be some sort
of acknowledgment received click-through.
And then--
>> Does that mean that just web browsing is restricted
or let's say I have an alarm monitoring system that is going
to use a different port entirely,
is all our ports cut off or just port 80?
>> Just the web browsing for purposes of an interface
through which a customer can acknowledge
that they have received the alert.
>> So, in other words, like my alarm system
or heart monitor is going to keep working.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> The goal of VPN is to specifically mandate those kinds
of surveys cannot be affected by the mitigation measure.
>> So the goal then is in our mitigation phase,
what we're constructing is a-- essentially a landing area,
a soft landing area where the customer is restricted
in the type of browsing that they can do
until they either acknowledge or participate
in the appeal process.
If they'll participate in the appeal process,
then all of those measures are suspended pending the outcome
of the appeal.
>> Can I make another point
because this is the Internet Society, we're members,
Theresa is one of them, [inaudible] on the board.
We believe what the Internet Society is about,
and one of the things I'm working on,
I wish we're working very hard with them, a lot of people is--
we're more working on it too, is the ITU maintenance coming up
and the importance of multistakeholder organizations
in the internet are not adding up mandates and regulation.
And, to me, this is an example of another one
of those multistakeholder approaches
where players get together, no government actually mandates,
and there's not laws involved, trying to work out some kind
of process to help deal with the problem on the internet.
And I-- it's another example of how to do that.
So I think in essence, it's also positive and it's something
that I believe is in the spirit
of what the Internet Society is all about.
>> And I-- hold that thought,
we'll get to Q and A in a second.
But there are also-- it's a wonderful event today
that the Internet Society is putting together.
There aren't enough of them inside.
I just wanted to say thank you
to the Internet Society for putting this on.
Let me see how much time we have 'cause we started a little late,
Paul?
Anyone?
>> About 15, 20 minutes.
>> We've got about 20 minutes left, so, let me ask 1
or 2 questions and then you folks may know much more
about it and I already someone jumping up with the mic.
So this get-- give me about 3 minutes.
Okay, we have VPNs, we have Tor.
If someone's using a VPN or Tor,
this thing ain't going to work, right?
So this just push the more determined pirates
into [background noise] darker more black area of the internet
and see the sketch kind of the loser ones
who aren't that smart.
>> So, this program is really not structured to try
to address serial pirates who are intentionally trying
to circumvent, you know,
intellectual property protection.
I think where we are aiming is not low.
It is-- what we believe are the vast majority of people
for whom, you know, trading
and copyrighted material has become sort of a social norm.
And over the course of many years, you know, everybody sort
of trades their music.
It's something that, you know, we used to trade mixed tapes
if anyone as old as I am and this is kind of in some ways
for some people has become the natural evolution and I think
with a 6 alert system, that has focused a lot
on how you [inaudible] someone, what do you tell them.
You know, do you tell them where to find the authorized files,
what other-- you know, if their wireless is not secured,
how might we do that to avoid someone else using their network
without their permission.
This is really a program that we think will affect the vast
majority of people out there but it is not going to address,
you know, the needs of large scale pirates or our need
or the content communities need to deal with the problem
of large scale pirates.
So, you know, you have to take a gamble.
If you think that 90 percent of people
out there either don't understand copyright,
they don't understand what the rules and obligations are,
they don't understand its value and this is an opportunity
to educate them and to make available to them
in a more direct way the compelling options
that are available to draw content legally
and in an authorized way.
Hopefully, we see a pretty good decrease
in the [inaudible] peer-to-peer networks by people generally.
But, you know, yes, there are ways around this.
There are other ways to pirate and that is, you know,
for now not-- is not addressed by this program.
>> Let me ask Link and Fernando a question,
the law does not require you folks
to sign up for this process.
We have the DMCA enacted 14 or so years ago with you argue
in the past is sufficient, so why do this now?
Is it that you're pushing people towards legitimate services,
some of which you could profit from?
Is it because you don't know how to deal
with this unstructured approach of receiving complaints?
What's the real reason?
>> Come on.
>> So I mean, sure.
I think it's important as an educational matter.
I think it's an appropriate moment in the development
of the internet to actually work in a collaborative fashion
with the different stakeholders.
I mean it is otherwise an environment
of friction as you describe.
It's otherwise an environment of increasing legal back and forth.
This is an opportunity to make it a collaborative process
that puts customer education first
which for us is a win rather than going down the path
that is confrontational with customers.
This is an opportunity to work collaboratively
with the other ISPs and with partners in the content side
and with consumer groups as well to do something
that we think is the right time for it
and it's the right moderated and educational approach.
Do you have a?
>> There is a-- as mentioned earlier,
there have been programs and we've been involved
with them already with some companies doing those
in the past [inaudible] calling before this and the advantage
of something like this is number 1, it is--
will be understandable by all consumers we hope better
and education them better
because all the companies are pretty much doing the same type
of-- [Inaudible Remark].
Not exactly the same way
but basically the framework is the same.
So, they want to understand it better
from that standpoint, and less confusion.
And second, it continues to have protect
against privacy as a central feature.
It does nothing at all in terms of providing any information
to the content players about who the customer is
or anything like that.
The only time the customer would ever be noticed at all is
that they decide they want to appeal and that's
on their own volition if they decide to.
But basically, this program still does that and third,
it has a pretty strong I think way to give them a chance
to say, "This is not, you know, something that it is."
So, to us is build the protections
that we have not been able to do.
I don't think we could have done as well
as an industry wide basis as we did in [inaudible].
>> Let's turn us over to the audience for questions.
We've got about 15 minutes.
We've got some microphones if you want to--
I presume we should be using the microphones.
>> If somebody go first.
>> You've been sitting there.
You know you want to get up and shout [inaudible].
Identify yourself unless you have an objection
to an argument anytime or violating it.
>> Okay. I'm Dave Burstein.
I write about some of this stuff.
I'm on the Board of Directors at the local ISOC.
I've been following the ITU among the ITAC
at state department and I've been writing
about this stuff since '99.
I can't believe what I'm hearing or I can believe it,
but it just seems totally absurd to me.
I'm a Fonera, that means that I share my Wi-Fi
with any other Fonera in my neighborhood
who happens to come by.
In return for that, when I go to Paris in two weeks, I'll be able
to hook up to about 400,000 Wi-Fi hotspots of people
who do the same there.
Now, this is crucial that we don't touch and affect it
because as Link knows better than I, he's a trained engineer.
We need more wireless capacity
and we effectively double wireless capacity
by bringing in local Wi-Fi--
>> So your question is?
>> The question is, I'm going to be there with an open Wi-Fi
to anybody who passes by and anybody in my neighborhood.
I sure as hell I'm not responsible
for what they send to you.
I believe there is no court judgment that's gone
against that and I believe would be terrible public policy
to shut down Wi-Fi and make us pay more to Verizon
for my wireless phone.
It's 70 bucks to begin with already.
So the question is, what happens if I, a Time Warner customer,
gets a notice and I say my Wi-Fi is open.
I don't track with people do.
I could impossibly track what people do.
How do you just-- how do you proceed to ignore that?
>> How many strikes until they're out sorry, Jill.
>> No, no, no, you're going to put me
out because my Wi-Fi is open?
>> What's question.
>> So the open Wi-Fi question, let's assume
that you have people who are actually not just allegedly
infringing copyrights but actually infringing copyrights
on occasion using his open Wi-Fi, then what?
>> Is the question to me?
Who's the question to Dave?
>> Well, I happen to be one of your customers.
>> Well, thank you for your business.
[laughter]
>> And I read in several times
that my Time Warner cable modem is rock solid closed
to 10 megabits.
>> Thank you for your business first of all.
I believe that it's inconsistent with our terms of service
for you to provide open service, you know,
come as you are service on a-- even on a non-[inaudible] basis.
>> What?
>> That was 12 years ago, I don't know.
>> No, everybody's been doing this.
We've got millions out there.
It's been long supported and it's obvious public policy
as Link and-- well, you're in the policy room as well.
You know how crucial it is
to get more effective spectrum capacity.
>> Actually, well, I hate to say it, but a lot them--
a lot of companies do restrict that in the terms of service.
>> Yeah, but I got 2 choices that happen to both be up there
and they both happen to have the same terms
of service more likely than not.
[Multiple Speakers]
>> Let me just clear as before,
we debate it 'cause we're not making the document--
[inaudible] [Inaudible Remark] And, the other point is Dave
that you'll get notices--
>> Yeah.
>> -- sufficient to educate you about whether
or not that's happening on your account and if
that happens 6 times and you go through the process
and what you're doing is hosting someone's ability
to actually download infringing files can--
you will consider yourself sufficiently educated I guess.
>> Then what?
>> Are going to shut me down for having open Wi-Fi?
>> It's not a termination program.
>> Is open Wi-Fi not available?
>> This is not a termination program.
>> So then what happens, does he get throttled or does the folks
on the other side of the table come with a lawsuit?
>> At the end of that last note--
>> Let's assume it's like 10 notices, we're past 6.
>> Six already there, at the end of that process.
Basically that's it.
Nothing else happens from our standpoint.
[Multiple Speakers]
>> That's your obligation under the program.
>> Yeah, it's up to the other end of the table then.
>> If-- then-- so this goes back to my point earlier
which is this program, you know,
with all due respect is not going
to change your behavior at all or address--
>> Oh yeah.
>> -- your approach to this and, you know, if 80 percent
of the people that we're dealing with,
that's primarily account holders or like that then, you know,
we'll probably have to reconsider.
But I would say this which is once you have gotten 6--
5 or 6 notices depending on the ISP and you have gone
through a mitigation measure, so you will--
you know, depending on who your ISP,
you might have your internet slowed down for a couple of days
and you can be pissed with Verizon, you can be pissed
with the people using your network to violate copyright,
and then you won't get any more notices
and nothing will happen under this program.
However, it--
>> Will I be shut down-- [Multiple Speakers]
>> You're not going to be shut down.
You're going to have your--
>> Am I going to be throttled once--
>> Once, and you will actually won't ever get another notice.
You will be sort of unreachable by the program
but I will say just, you know, to represent all of the ISPs
that are in the program.
For all of them, it is in fact, against their terms of service,
not necessary to have an open wireless but to allow someone
to use your wireless for copyright infringement.
And so, whatever your terms of services,
I think if you read it, you are responsible
as the primary account holder for that activity.
That doesn't require you to shut
down your wireless but you're unnoticed.
>> Let's take another question.
If you could identify yourself?
>> Well, number 1, it doesn't say--
>> And you are?
>> Oh, I'm sorry.
My name is Timothy Sanders.
I don't know if any reliable technical means to inform--
to contact users over the internet connection unless
you're using Deep Packet Inspection
or you can intercept SSL to modify.
I'm assuming you're using a transparent proxy
to make a pop-up as you called it but those are--
there's no reliable way to do
that as I'm sure anybody here knows especially as--
if somebody's using Google, that's going
to be SSL the entire way.
So how do you address that and also,
the content industry really does need to be educated.
Still, they have a long history of failure from the DMCA
which has been thoroughly abused and as a content creator myself,
my competitors have used it to prevent me
from distributing content.
So what assurances can you give based
on every time we'd have a similar thing
like this that's been abused,
that it will not continue to happen.
>> What's actually-- and we're kind of running low on time
so let's take the other questions in quick succession
and then let the panelist respond if you don't mind.
Yes, sir?
>> Hi. My name is Joe Plotkin.
I'm on the board of ISOC New York as well
as on the board of NYCwireless.
We do free Wi-Fi around New York in public places
so the people can, you know, do whatever they want to do
in public places on the internet.
It seems absurd to me no different than, say,
preventing me from-- if I owned a store and I had a pay phone
in my store and somebody planned a bank robbery on my pay phone.
Am I now no longer--
am I supposed to be policing what people are saying
on the pay phone on my store?
It seems analogous to the situation of forcing everybody
to lock down their Wi-Fi on behalf of--
to act as agents of the copyright holders.
It seems a little-- to use an old New York expression,
a little chutzpadik.
[laughter]
>> Another New York expression I hope.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> My name is Paul Geller.
I'm personally being sued for 17 billion dollars by members
of the RIAA and I just heard 3 instances
where we were applauding compromise.
I was just wondering if we thought it was important
or even proper to be applauding compromise on something
as important as freedom of speech.
It seems more like we should--
that'd be something that we should be fighting for.
My question, though, is more about what happens
in the instance that we do detect that there were--
are sort of fraudulent notices being sent, either fraudulent
or even mistake notices.
Is there some recourse not from the user's end
but is there going to be a penalization of companies
or copyright industry sort of companies
for either abusing the system
or accidentally sending takedown notices, so to speak,
to use a sort of DMCA term?
>> I have some questions from the internet
but let's have some responses for the last 3 from the panel
and if there are any quick responses.
>> I'm going to take the last question.
We did have a technical review
of the content methodology done by Stroz Friedberg.
A public version, a redacted version
of that report is available on the CCI website.
That was the initial view to try to determine
that if the content owners are not fraudulent
in sending notices, there will also be periodic subsequent
reviews of the methodology.
So we're trying to address that concern
through these periodic reviews.
>> [Inaudible] wiser working with DCMA.
Why are we still getting fraudulent takedown notices,
with notices that are-- don't apply to fair of use.
Why can't somebody [inaudible] that stuff?
>> Well, let me try to amplify your question and say
under the DMCA, you have to send a takedown notice signed
under penalty of perjury
so there's illegal consequences in theory.
EFF has been trying to litigate this area if you make a mistake.
But are there any penalty of perjury or similar steps,
put up a bond, if you're a copyright holder,
requirements in this process.
>> Under the MOU, any notice that we send is also
under penalty of perjury.
>> Let's go to the internet for some questions.
>> The answers are right there.
>> Sorry. [Inaudible Remark] You hold on.
Let the folks-- give me just 2 minutes.
So questions from the internet.
Why were the small internet providers not invited
to participate in this system?
Any quick response anyone?
Maybe Jill?
>> You know, I would turn it around to say this was,
you know, kind of a groundbreaking effort
that took a lot of time to come to fruition
and I think we have been discussing,
actually adding additional participants as soon
as we get the program up and running.
So it's not intended to be exclusive by any means
but these were the people around the table initially.
>> All right.
I should have from the other side of the content owners--
>> But that was my next question, where--
are other content owners invited to join?
>> Well, they are and it may be slightly misleading just have
representatives from 2 trade associations and Fox here.
Under the umbrella of the MPAA and the RIAA are many,
many independent-- small or independent contenders.
The-- through the IFTA which is the Independent Film
and Television Alliance
which represents independent motion picture producers
and A2IM which represents smaller independent record
labels are participating via the RIAA.
>> All right.
Here's one or more-- I'll slip one more question
from the internet and under the MOU,
the participating ISPs are obliged to collect
and share information on repeated infringers.
This information could potentially be used
to sue individual subscribers.
Why this is language in the agreement?
>> That's actually not accurate because the identity
of individuals is not made--
is not provided to the content owners.
So what we learned through the system would not help us
to sue anybody if we wanted to do that.
>> Let's take another question from the audience.
>> Did I hear correctly
that this was only looking at P-to-P networks?
>> That's right.
It's wireline-- It's residential wireline P-to-P
so it's quite narrow.
>> So as far as like file lockers or personal--
>> Not part of this program.
>> Okay, I was just-- I wanted to [inaudible].
>> So let me-- any other questions from the audience?
Yes, sir?
[ Inaudible Remarks ]
>> I just-- if 6 strikes and then somebody [inaudible]?
If someone goes and does it again and again and again
and again and again, what are you going
to do you haven't really answered that?
>> Well, I think the ISPs said, "Hey, our work here is done."
So how about the other side?
>> We-- It's the same as today
for the program doesn't do affect,
what are we going to about piracy?
I mean, right, there's-- it's a 6 strike--
a 6 notice system and it's done.
We're done with the notice system.
We have the same legal entities that we have today
or if you make use of it or not.
So if we can sue endusers, we can, you know,
make new educational campaigns.
We can do--
>> One, are you obligated to use this for you to sue at anyway?
>> Nope.
>> No. And two, is this discoverable instantly
into the fact that I [inaudible] 6 notices.
>> I think that's probably the point of the 6 notices.
[Inaudible Remark] But let's-- [Inaudible Remark] So would--
let's-- any responses to that?
[Multiple Speakers]
>> I think-- I'm not sure what the legal significance
of that is but, I don't know,
maybe some copyright [inaudible].
>> We've got some lawyers on the panel.
>> No, I'm totally on TV.
>> I mean there's-- [laughter] It's been, what, 4 or 5 years
since either major record labels
or major movie studios have been suing individual characters.
I'm not aware of any plans by anyone
of us to start doing that.
Will we ever say, "We're never going to do that again?"
I don't think anyone is willing to say that but is this--
it's certainly not part of this system
and it's certainly not something that's [inaudible]--
>> It's-- the system is designed to make
that less appealing frankly from our perspective.
The whole idea is it becomes less important to think
about suing people because of the existence of this system.
We'll have to see if it works or in
that regard and that's our hope.
>> Any recompense if internet users are falsely accused of?
But I guess the answer would be
that there's no real harm except a brief slowdown.
So there shouldn't-- [Multiple Speakers]
>> Right, and as soon as you file the so-called appeal,
the imposition of the mitigation measure stay, so if you get--
if you've basically gone through and gotten the first 4 alerts
and you're still allegedly infringed and you get the 5th
and you say, "No, no, no, that's actually inaccurate,
I really didn't do it," and you decide to file an appeal,
as soon as you file the appeal, the imposition
of that mitigation measures states you basically will never
suffer it if you prevail in your appeal in other words,
demonstrate that the copyright work was not accurate.
>> Well, and you set at zero too.
[Multiple Speakers] And you reset to zero also
if you win your appeal.
>> There's-- let me throw out this.
So Annemarie Bridy from the University
of Idaho came out with an analysis.
She said some good things about this system
and she said some more negative things.
She said there're insufficient safeguards
to ensure the accuracy validations.
She said there's no way for the public
to know whether the program is meeting the goals established
forth in the MOU.
How about a response to that?
How are we going to know whether this thing works or not?
>> It's funny 'cause I actually just happened
to have read her article
over lunch before I came over here today.
Some of-- the focus
of her complaints is really about transparency.
In this in-- I mean it came out--
I believe the article came out several months ago.
Since then, a number other things that she complained
about has been publicly announced as part of a run
up to the launch the program.
For example, the release of the technical analysis, you know,
the release of the identity
of the fair use expert whose memorandum is going
to inform the reviewers
who administered the appeals process.
So I mean even I think that most of the things
that she was actually complaining
about in her article had since been [inaudible].
>> And so, [inaudible] the next panel will do the public
interest groups agree.
Are there any other questions in the audience?
I see a hand up.
There's a microphone control somewhere on your desk.
[Inaudible Remark]
And so, you are?
>> I'm Kevin Colley [phonetic].
[Inaudible Remark]
>> [Inaudible].
Can you describe what the appeals process would look
like [inaudible] process?
Is the metrics with that?
>> Sure. So the appeals process is going to be run
by the American Arbitration Association.
They are, you know, as I think most people know,
sort of the foremost expert in the country
with most experienced around alternative dispute resolution.
They have worked with us over the past year
to build an interface so that this system will be pretty much
all seamless for the consumer.
They can link directly from their ISP to say,
"I want to file an appeal."
They sign into the AAA, create a username and password
and in fact, they don't even have to use their real name
at that point, can file an appeal for several
of the reasons 'cause there are a set of reasons
that people can appeal.
It's misidentification of file, you know,
"This wasn't me," you know, fair use.
For several of the categories, they never have
to identify themselves and actually
when they pay 35 dollars and it's cost us
by a third party payment process
or that information is never combined.
So, even the people at AAA won't necessarily know
who the consumer is.
There is an exception so if a user says, "I had authorization
to use that file," one of the things the user has
to do is present that authorization
and one would think that would be personal authorization.
So I, Joe Lesser, was given a right by Warner Brothers to,
you know, show and to share this movie
and here's evidence of that.
That process has-- you know,
has laid out in the MOU how many days they have
to review the packet of information that comes both
from the ISP and the content owner on how the file--
you know, the methodology, how the file was found, the date
and time, making sure-- matching up the date and time
with the use of a particular IP address
and how the ISP match a consumer.
They will then, after looking at that appeal, issue a decision
if the-- and appeal's probably the wrong word
but if the notices on the alert is invalidated,
then the consumer will be, number 1, refunded his
or her 35 dollars and number 2,
their account will be reset to zero.
So if you're level 4 in an ISP that gets to mitigation level 4,
you'll end up back at zero.
[Inaudible Remark] [Multiple Speakers]
>> Well, our next panel has stepped over
and as our moderator but there's no requirement
that these folks showed up today and it's--
sometimes decisions like these get made entirely behind closed
doors and so, it's-- we're grateful if they did and also
to the Internet Society and I suspect Paula did a lot
of the organization for this.
So let's give everyone,
especially the Internet Society a round of applause.
[ Applause ]
>> And thank you Declan.
That was just outstanding.
So the other panel, our next panel please come on up
and we will make a quick transition.
>> Should we put on our name tags?
>> Yes, name tags.
>> You can leave them up.
>> Oh, leave them up?
>> Yeah, we're actually [inaudible] so that's all right.
>> Okay, that's all right.
[ Inaudible Discussion ]
>> I've got one here.
>> That's great, thanks.
[ Inaudible Discussion ]
>> So, I'm Jeff Jarvis.
I'm going to blame ad moderation on Sandy.
I'm going to blame everything on Sandy for the next few weeks.
So I want to start-- I think that the views
of this group are not probably so obvious
as the name tags of the last group.
So what I would like to do in this session is just ask you
to [noise] spend a couple
of minutes briefly saying their view of this.
So you all have context level of discussion up here
and then we'll have a discussion with everyone.
We'll rule the whole [inaudible].
So if you want to start?
>> Sure. Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm Gigi Sohn and I'm the President
and CEO of Public Knowledge.
We're a public interest advocacy organization that fights
for open internet and balanced copyright laws.
I'm very glad I had a glass of wine at lunch.
[laughter] So, I'm on the advisory board of the Center
for Copyright Information and I want to talk a little bit
about what my role is and a little bit
about what I think of the program.
Obviously, if I thought it was the devil's spawn,
I would not be on the advisory board.
I actually think that the-- that the system has some value
if done right and that's why I'm on the advisory board.
I also-- I need to pick up on something that Ron Wheeler said.
These kinds of notices have been going
on for about 5, 6years now.
This really is nothing new.
Now [inaudible] is a big MOU and appeals process and all that,
you need to ask the content industry 'cause that's kind
of the way they wanted it.
But now I think we actually have the system
that has more due process and more openness
and more transparency, not as much as I want, believe you me
and I could talk a little bit about some of my concerns,
you know, with the program that I'd
like to see rectified at some point.
But I think in a lot of ways, this is a better system
than the one that it was before.
It doesn't mean it's perfect, by any means.
But I want to talk a little bit about my role
because it was not an easy decision as Jill
and the other folks who work with the CCI will tell you
in the post SOPA PIPA era which my organization was, you know,
one of the leading folks fighting that--
fighting those bills to do something like this.
But the reason I want to do it was
because I thought there was a role
for a real consumer advocate to make sure
that consumers were protected
that this system is fairly implemented with a minimum
of false positives, due process, and a great deal
of transparency and openness.
And what I've been spending I guess the last 6 months
or so is really beating the living day lights
and Jill will-- Jill Lesser will tell you this and she
and I are good friends for about 20 years,
of beating living daylights out of her and colleagues
to be more transparent and open.
I'm not going to give myself entire credit
for the Stroz report being released but you know,
I'd beat up on them on that.
When the time comes when there's enough data collected
about how many people get notices and how many sort
of repeat defenders there are and how many appeals
and how many appeals are successful.
I'm going to want to see that released to the public as well
and that data open so people could do studies on it.
Now we talked about the Stroz report.
There's a huge elephant in the room.
If anybody reads the Daily Dot or I can see Ernesto
from TorrentFreak, or at least the fact that, you know,
4 years ago, Stroz Friedberg did some lobbying
for the Recording Industry Association of America.
I'm not going to pass judgment on whether that made them,
you know, not qualified or not to do this report.
But the CCI has pledged to have another independent analyst
analyze the report and analyze the methodology.
If people have ideas and rather than complain,
if people have ideas for a really good analyst
to take this on, I gave a speech at Princeton last week
and talked to Ed Felten and Steve Schultz.
I think they would be excellent folks.
But if there's anybody else that people have ideas,
come and tell me, right.
I really see myself as sort of a liaison
to the consumer community and being a real pain
in the behind not only to the content industry
but also to the ISPs as well.
I just want to say very, very briefly, you know,
if I can wave a magic wand in the things I'd
like to see changed in the MOU,
I just say what they are briefly.
And then I want to make 2 other points and then I'll stop.
I mean, I was not crazy about the appeal fee.
It was originally 50 dollars.
We get it down to 35 dollars.
It does get waived in a number of instances.
You show hardship.
I think that's good, not perfect but better.
I don't like the fact that you can only use the open
wireless excuse.
To Dave Burstein's point, he's left,
only once there were very good reasons to have open wireless
and I think, you know, the telecom industry
and the cable industry thinks open wireless is pretty damn
good too.
I wanted the copyright owners to show more proof
that they actually own the copyright.
I don't think they have to show enough proof.
And I also thought that on the-- in the appeals process,
an individual should have all copyright defenses.
And then, they have quite a few but I think you should have all.
If it's not illegal under copyright law, you know,
you should be able to defend yourself under anything.
It shouldn't be limited.
Let me make 2 closing points.
While I do think that this system has some educational
value and I do think if it's done right,
it will be largely benign.
There's another half of the equation that I'm going
to continue to talk about in my role of public knowledge
and that is the need for the content industry
to make their content available ubiquitously at a fair price.
I was at the NPR today and there was a lot
of talk how the movie studies is starting
to make their movies available even before the theatre
release state.
I think that's fabulous,
except they're only doing it on video on demand.
I might just even make it available online.
It's not just about consumers doing the right thing,
it's about-- and the ISPs doing the right thing.
I think the content companies have to start
to do the right thing too and I'm glad that they're starting.
The second point I want to make is that I see a lot of energy
in this room and a lot of folks upset.
And I can understand it, I get it, right.
I mean, I've been doing this kind of work for 11 years now.
But,I'd like to see a lot
of that negative energy put towards positive
copyright reform.
Somebody talked about fraudulent notices and what's the penalty,
for example under the DMCA.
When somebody willy nilly sends a bunch of fraudulent notices.
Well, my organization has a proposal
that would punish those abusers.
So, am I going to get 14 million people to weigh in,
in Congress for something positive
like people did negatively against SOPA and PIPA.
Think about that.
I think we actually have an opportunity
to make affirmative change and strength in fair use
and strength in consumer rights in this Congress.
We have some very powerful people who want to be
in our side including Darrell Issa
and Chuck Schumer, people like that.
So think about whether you can turn the negative energy
to something positive.
And if you can, sign up for a mailing list.
>> Hi. So, my name is Molly Land.
I'm a professor here.
And I just wanted to thank-- before we got started,
I just wanted to thank the Internet Society
for hosting this year.
It's great to have you for the invitation.
So, my background is in international law
and specifically human rights law
and Konstantinos already started out talking
about Frank La Rue statement.
But I will follow up on that and really focus on some
of the human rights concerns
that have been raised around the scheme.
So there're a number of different types
of concerns you might see.
There's privacy concerns.
I know the first panel talked about how a lot
of these monitoring has already gone on
but there have also been questions raised
about deep pocket inspection and additional surveillance
and monitoring that's going to be necessary to talk use
of behavior and that raise the privacy concerns.
Another concern might be the cost of the program
which has been-- there have been various ranges estimated
for the cost that ISPs are going to incur for funding this
and this cost being passed on to consumers which has an effect
on ability of access, right, that in my--
in some cases, become an additional burden for people
who are already economically disadvantaged.
And I just-- the one I wanted to really focus more
on is the question of the sanction
because that's received the most attention
under international law, at least.
Specifically, the possibility that access might be terminated,
that internet access might be terminated
to users even temporarily.
So this has raised a lot of concerns
because it affects certainly, right, the expression
and the ability to exchange information and freedom
of association, right, 'cause this is how we socialize.
This is how we connect with our friends,
our family and loved ones.
The concern has been raised
under international human rights law is that that sanction
of termination is disproportionate on to the goals
of the system, particularly because the internet plays
such a crucial rule in all aspects of our lives.
Now, as encouraged on the first panel that-- I think it was--
the statement, this is not a termination program, and that,
if there were 6 notices sent out, that at the end,
that was sort of it and people were going to be cut off.
But I don't want to leave the issue there.
I'd actually be really interested
in hearing more about, is it the decision of all ISPs.
Is this only the decision of these particular providers.
If there hasn't been a decision not
to have termination beyond the table,
can we get that in writing?
[laughter] Because it's still--
it's in the Memorandum of Understanding.
Mitigation measures can include temporary redirection
to [inaudible] page temporary restriction.
Temporary redirection until you complete an educational program,
or such other temporary mitigation measures may be
applied by the participating ISPs.
So the possibility is still there,
and you gave them the importance of the internet.
I want to really encourage us to think very strongly
about the consequences of termination for our rights.
I guess, you know, I don't want to get--
I want to leave more time [inaudible].
So I'll jump to just a few closing thoughts
about the process to go forward.
I think the human rights concerns that are
on the table don't mean that you can't construct a copyright
system of this kind.
I think I share your concern that I want to try
to make it better and so really just a few closing thoughts.
One would be again, given the problems associated
with termination, right, and just to give context to that,
I was thinking today
about everything I use the internet for, to buy groceries,
to buy diapers, to find health information about, you know,
how to treat my sick children.
It's really so essential that I just feel
that termination is something that we need to focus on.
So we might consider taking it off the table.
I think if we take that off the table,
it helps in a number of ways.
First of all, less of your sanctions are going
to be more proportional, and therefore,
more valid under human rights law.
And, you know, just in terms
of social justice perspectives, in general.
I think it also helps
to alleviate some concerns with due process.
Right, there's concerns
about the process that's been constructed
and if the sanction is less severe,
then the process may not--
may be more satisfied with the more abbreviated process
or more presumptions such as are currently in the process.
And then I think the last thing I would encourage us
to do is think about the accuracy
and not the technical accuracy
which I think we've already talked about,
but the legal accuracy of the process that's provided.
I'm concerned about the fact
that that presumption has been shifted, that the burden is
on the user to show that they're entitled,
that they're not in fact an infringer.
I'm concerned about that both because our approach,
in general, is, right, you're innocent until proven guilty
or so that if you want to not put that burden on people.
But, in particular, because if--
if a person is subject to mitigation measure sanction
and they don't have-- I know 35 dollars would be--
is better than 50, but it's still 35 and it could be waived,
that's true, but it's a process you have to initiate
and for people who don't have a lot of time, don't have a lot
of resources, don't have a lot of wherewithal,
it can be used significant burden to even have to go
through that-- through that process itself to initiate it.
So in posing a burden process on someone to show that they are
in fact entitled to continue having their access,
I think it's problematic.
And I mentioned some other legal parts of the scheme
that are concerning presumptions of accuracy that apply.
So if we are worried about technical accuracy,
we have to understand that that works in conjunction
with the legal provisions that exist
in the memorandum of understanding.
>> Thank you.
I want to notice that I'm seeing some beasts I haven't seen
in the long while, the Fail Whale.
Are you-- Is Twitter down, so I don't know how are we going
to get questions from-- or comments later.
Is there-- if there's another message, let me know.
>> Are we closing the [inaudible] or something else
about General Petraeus.
>> It's the Super Bowl of internet rights.
I'm Aram Sinnreich and I'm a professor of media studies
at Rutgers University.
I just got to write a book called the Piracy Crusade
which is available through the Creative Commons License
[inaudible] or online at piracycrusade.com.
A lot of my concerns have already been addressed
by a fellow panelist.
In fact, a lot [inaudible] from the first panel.
I would point out a few issues.
Number 1, there is a significant civil rights--
civil liberties issue here.
Thank you.
Now, that civil liberties issue comes in many forms.
There's the freedom of speech issue which is, you know,
just this year, the UN has ratified internet access
as a fundamental human right and the notion
that it's a good thing that this policy doesn't kick people off
the internet entirely but even the notion of redirecting you
to a splash page where you have to, you know,
address the grievances
of the content industry before you can have access
to basic internet services is very problematic.
Also, you know, we've talked a lot about the many ways in which
over the last 15 years, the DMCA has been misapplied.
This is-- and only but it's still a goodie
in the respect that, you know,
if you look at the most recent presidential campaign
for instance, you saw, you know, the exemplars of free speech
and of fair use of political campaigns being taken off
of YouTube fraudulently with DMCA takedown notices.
That's one of many, many, many examples of how these--
these kinds of policies have all too well been tend to air
on the side of overprotection and you know, the metaphor
that I always use when I talk with late people is you got,
you know, dolphins caught in the tuna nets.
And the question isn't really, you know, are dolphins going
to die or do people have the right to fish a tuna?
The question is really where you draw the line.
How many dolphin deaths are you willing to accept in order
to maintain the tuna industry and you know,
for all the walking of these conversations,
that's really the fundamental question that debates
over this kind of policy come down to.
Now in addition to the civil liberties issues
like free speech, there're also civil rights issues.
So part of the research that I do
in the academy is these massive surveys looking at the way
that people all over the world using technologies to engage
in emerging cultural forms like mash-ups and remixes
and video game mods and all this wonderful stuff
that I call configurable culture
and when I've done these surveys,
I find something very interesting about people's use
of privacy tools on the internet.
Now if you look across all different age groups
from the youngest people I surveyed, which is 18,
to the oldest, which is 90 something,
every single age group is equally concerned
with their privacy on the internet.
In fact, it ends up being on a 5-point scale,
about 4.0 across the board.
But what you find is that the older
and the older the respondents get,
the less likely the [inaudible] have actually adjusted their
privacy settings and that really scales many of them with age
because it scales with internet expertise.
You also find the same kind of dynamic applied to things
like education and income.
So the wealthier you are, the younger you are,
the better educated you are, the more likely you are
to have actually done something
about your privacy online regardless
of how much you care about.
That is a serious issue when you think about the fact
that this is essentially a tuna net
that only catches the poorest
and most disenfranchised tuna in the ocean, right?
As was pointed out by one
of the audience members during the first panel,
people who are internet savvy, people who have good educations,
people who are young, people
who are already socially enfranchised are going
to be the ones who know well enough to use the VPN
or to use a tool or to use a mother tool that's going
to allude the grasp of the content monitors which means
that the people who end up getting caught
and having their lives interrupted by this,
having to pay the fees, having to consult their lawyers,
having to face the prospect of being disenfranchised in terms
of losing their internet access even to some degree for a period
of time, are going to be the most disenfranchised groups
in our societies.
So this is going to widen the gap
between the information-haves and the information-have-nots.
The last point that I would make is like everyone else, you know,
I could go on about this for hours
but the last point I would make
and I don't think anyone's really went to this side or not
and I apologize because I actually do think this is a very
good faith effort on behalf of industry, you know.
In the spectrum of anti-piracy measures, laws and policies
that were enacted over the years, this is very, very mild
and very, very fair to the needs of consumers.
That being said, this is not going to work.
I don't mean from the technical standpoint,
although that's debatable.
I'd have to know more about the platform but it's not going
to work in terms of the social aspect and this is--
I've traced-- long before I was in academia,
I was a research analyst for a firm here
in New York City called Jupiter Research
and I published what I think is the first research ever
published back in about 12, 13 years ago on the effect
of file sharing on music scenes and I was the guy
that said Napster was actually helping sell music back
in spring of 2000 or something for which
I was, you know, crucified by my own clients at the RIAA and MPAA
and what I was telling people at the time
when the Napster decision was happening
and Judge Patel said there had to be, you know,
100 percent accuracy of Napster's content matching,
otherwise, the service couldn't operate.
You know I said at the time, "This is a hydra
and if you cut off one of the heads, more heads will spring up
and all you're going to do is end
up fragmenting the so-called piracy base and end
up sending it deeper and deeper underground,"
and exactly the same thing is true here, right?
Piracy requires a network effect in order to work.
Peer-to-peer is something that 5 people can do well,
50 people can do astoundingly well,
and 50 million people can turn into a vibrant platform.
And by aiming at the level of people
who don't have the capacity to use a work around like Tor
or VPN-- excuse me, I'm a little parched.
What you're essentially doing is assuring that the people
who are most equipped to develop the next generation
of peer-to-peer tools are going to be the ones
who have an incentive to do exactly that.
So I think if this does anything,
it's going to make the unlicensed use of content
over the internet more of a problem rather than less
for the content industry.
And I also think it's a bad bargain-- thank you.
I actually have one in front of me but--
I actually think it's a bad bargain for the ISPs.
You know, my intuition-- [noise] ah, sorry I've been
on speaking tour for the last 3 weeks.
My intuition is that the ISP's incentive in getting
into this is they want to preserve DMCA safe harbors
and they don't want to see legislation come
down in the US that's going to impose a 3 strikes law
that like we've seen in the France,
although that might be turned over in England and elsewhere.
And I don't think that the Hollywood is going
to be happy enough with the way that this works
to stop with this policy.
To the contrary, I think what it's going
to do is it's actually going
to raise the bar a little bit, right?
And so, the anti-piracy crusaders are going to be able
to say, "Well, even the ISPs agree that this level
of content monitoring is necessary and therefore,
why don't we instantiate it in some kind of legislation."
And this is a process that you see over and over and over again
with anti-piracy policies around the world is let's gain an inch
over here and then we'll gain another inch over there
and another inch over here and by the end of the process,
you've got a whole mile.
So to me, this isn't an inch game by the ISP
to forestall my loss, is an inch that's been lost on the way
to that mile marker and again, I could keep talking
in great length but I'll pass on.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> Thanks.
So first, we've been having some technical difficulties
with my voice this week
so hopefully it won't sound too scratchy.
My name is David Sohn.
I'm at the Center for Democracy and Technology
which is a nonprofit public interest group in Washington.
I should probably say no relation
to Gigi despite the shared last name.
My overall view on this is that I'm actually hopeful
that it has the potential to play a positive role.
I think there are also some real risks
and some implementation questions.
My overall impression is that the program is off
to a pretty good start in trying to anticipate and head off some
of the potential problems but I think ultimately,
we're going to have to wait and see how it all plays
out in practice and it is going to bear watching very closely
to make sure that it doesn't go off the rails.
So I'll say a little bit
about why I see some positive potential and then talk
about some of the implementation questions and risks that I see.
In terms of the positive potential,
I do think there's a shared interest in trying
to find some ways to reduce copyright infringement
that don't carry major collateral damage
and we've seen legislation in Washington, we've seen a lot
of other copyright initiatives
that do threaten very serious collateral damage.
I think this is one that if it's done right could avoid things
like interfering with the internet's technical
architecture, interfering with the ability of ISPs
or other kind of social networking tools
to empower users with new communications capabilities,
and hopefully, not push ISPs to take
on new privacy invasive practices like snooping on users
or trying to control user behavior.
This goes a little bit to the question
that Aram was just mentioning about, is this going
to an alternative to something else or is it just going
to be the first step on a slippery slope.
But certainly, on its own terms,
I think what this agreement ask ISPs to do is not nearly
as burdensome or problematic as some
of the other proposals that we've seen.
The key going forward, I think, is going to be
to really maintain the educational focus
that you heard people talking about on that first panel.
I mean, the long-term challenge
for addressing copyright infringement has to be
to get users to have attitude and behavior changes that lead
to less infringement, because the alternative--
I mean, the technology to engage in infringement is here to stay.
You're not going to be able
to take away people's communications tools or access
to the internet and to digital technologies, so the level
of infringement is really going to depend
on what users choose to do.
And so, I think education really is part
of a long range constructive solution
to the problem of infringement.
We need to try to get to the point not
where nobody infringes 'cause there's always going to be some,
but ideally, we get to a point where most of the people most
of the time don't bother to engage in infringement,
don't see that as the choice that they would want to make
because among other things, there's decent law services
and perhaps because they're getting notices
that keep them informed.
So, to the risks and the questions, if the focus were
to evolve away from pure education
and towards punishment, I think
that raises the serious questions
that other people have discussed about due process
and is it really appropriate to punish people based
on a private determination like this
without any involvement of a court?
Absolutely.
CDT was very concerned when the MOU was first released
because it did seem to envision internet suspension among the
possible mitigation measures.
I think we've heard pretty clear statements
that it's not currently in any ISP's plan to do that,
so we're certainly encouraged by that.
>> Although it's open to that possibility.
>> So, it certainly is there in the agreement.
So, this is why I say there are implementation questions
to watch as this thing evolves, right?
If people were to implement it in that way, I would be deeply,
deeply concerned about that.
If nobody implements it in that way,
then we've got a different analysis,
the worst case scenario has now come to pass, right?
There are some additional questions which I'll try
to tick through quickly.
One, I think, was raised by a questioner to the first panel
that wasn't really answered which was, is it really
that easy to give people notices
that they pay attention to and actually see?
It's a nontrivial problem.
How do you actually give a notice?
I mean, if a pop-up shows up on the computer screen, well,
if the fundamental problem is that there's a 15-year-old
in the household who's engaging in file sharing
and the parents have no idea,
the pop-up may reach same 15-year-old
and just be clicked through.
So, you know, it's I think a tricky problem
to see how good a job will this do
of reaching the actual account holders
who have some ability to control it.
Second, there's the question of how effective the system will be
in avoiding erroneous flags of infringing content.
It is my understanding that the system is being setup to try
to only catch instances of whole works or nearly whole works
that are infringing so that, you know,
you're kind of fair use situations where a documentary
or some other file has an excerpt
from a copyrighted work would not get flagged.
That's my understanding.
I don't know how well in practice the system will do
at avoiding fair use kind of situations.
So I think that-- we'll just have to see how that plays out.
And then to the extent that some mistakes like that
or like just identifying the wrong account, to the extent
that that occurs, how effective will the system safeguards be
in addressing that.
There is an appeals process, will it really be simple
and practical enough for people who need to take advantage of it
to take advantage of it?
And then, additionally, this goes a little bit
to the transparency issue Gigi raised,
although it's a little broader than that too.
I'm curious to what extent the system will be able
to track whatever mistakes get made and learn from them.
So that if there are problems in how these works,
if people are being wrongly flagged,
how does that get fed into the system?
Is there any kind of feedback loop where that gets noticed
and rectified overtime and any flaws get exposed?
You know, if people are bringing successful appeals, for example,
you know, that suggests that the system was making some mistakes
on the front end and in addition to dismissing
that person's particular notices, it seems like at
that point, there ought to be some process for trying
to make sure that whatever mistakes caused, the mistake
and notices in the first place get fixed
on a going forward basis.
You could even imagine a situation
where a documentary film keeps getting identified wrongly
as being infringing because it contains some clip
of copyrighted content on a fair use basis.
Ideally, you'd want the system to take that kind of file,
make a hash of that and have some reference database of files
that it's going to stop flagging in the future
so that it's not sending mistaken notices.
All of that is entirely possible,
maybe all of that will happen.
It's just, these are implementation questions
and I just don't know how they will play out.
Let me get you one final thing real quick which is just--
that I think has not come up.
Consistent with that whole educational purpose,
I think it is envisioned
that the copyright information center is going
to be providing information about copyright to people.
I think it would be really important going forward
that that be sort of use the Fox News slogan,
"fair and balanced information."
There are some really hotly disputed issues
of copyright law right now.
And if that information were
to be slanted towards one particular viewpoint or where
to be kind of the equivalent of what you see in sports broadcast
where they say any description of this content can get you
in trouble, clearly overstating what the legal situation is,
you know, the whole organization would really, I think,
lose its ability to be a credible source of education
if it took a one-sided view of these issues.
>> Thanks.
I'm going to just going to go add and take a prerogative
of supposed to be an opinionated moderator.
So I'll add one note here and I think we go straight
to discussion with the whole room,
because I think time is getting nigh.
So, and what I hear at low level is we have a trust problem,
right?
We have a trust problem of the industry trusting its users.
We have certainly a problem
of the users trusting these industries.
And so this comes along and looks like a benign program
but people like me are asking, "Come on,
what's really going on here?"
At a very high level, we have a human rights question.
The internet is so vital to society now
that there is a reaction to saying that even slowing it down
or trying to threaten our use of it
in anyway is an issue now on human rights.
And I think that's an important angle on this and I would argue
that if you have a case like where you're going to fall,
you're not cutting it off but you're cutting it down,
didn't we learn from Mubarak
that the internet is a human right.
One more point.
I distrust a business model that relies on telling users,
costumers, they cannot do what they want to do and then trying
to make technology do what it can't do.
There's not a lot of future in that.
And I think we still have to grapple with that
so we're still going around the issue of copyright.
I'm not against copyright.
I will happily sell you my latest book called Public Parts.
[laughter] But, I do think that we haven't figured
out the new models of how to think about this.
And I want to mention just one very quickly,
there's something called repost.us that turns an article
into an embeddable unit that travels wherever it's embedded
with brand advertising revenue, analytics, and links.
So I have-- we have the one case of now news publishers
around the world going after Google like crazy saying,
"You're robbing from us," and why not go with the flow
and say, "Well, what if we enabled our content babies
to fly on their own and bring value back to us?
Then we've changed the model."
And if there's too little discussion of trying
to understand the reality of the internet and the reality
of the new models, and the reality of what was called
by one of the people in previous panel, a new social norm,
if that really is a social norm,
then how do we take advantage of it?
How do we build an industry around it?
The clever will do that.
The doomed will not.
So, with that, I'm happy to ask questions
to get discussion going but I think we have time limited
so I would love to make sure that we get everybody involved
and don't forget to hit the button and identify yourself.
>> Yeah, I'm Michael [inaudible] and the question I have
which is a little off scope
but I think you'd be interested to hear.
I think the group's discussion here and focus
on P-to-P network is certainly very interested.
But when we talk about the benefits for consumers in terms
of what they can do online and in terms of figure of speech
and just all the material, the information that's available,
I look at the internet ecosystem and I'm also seeing
that it is highly monetized by advertising.
And that whose sites that are providing
such an incredible content
to consumers are monetizing largely through advertising.
And I don't really care where that advertising is going.
And so you have sites that are both providing legal content
and illegal content and so at what point do we look
and tell them like this and say.,
"There's actually a benefit to consumers
that you're getting notifications that you maybe
on a site that is, you know, trafficking
and both utilizing the legal content
and therefore you have a choice, but there's also has
to be some sort of mechanism I think in here.
So discipline, we have an advertising networks
and the ecosystem that is really forcing at this allowing
for a great deal of advertisers to show--
>> Which is what Google has argued, yeah.
Google go after the advertising.
>> Well, I mean--
>> Google is the chief offender.
>> They do it, they do it but they also argue within that.
Yeah.
>> So I'm seeing, so we heard from content advisors saying,
"We're getting notification is really not
[inaudible] generally.
How the internet is being monetized
which is through advertising?
The advertising networks who will essentially boxes
where do the companies really care, the advertisers,
if they're getting perks, they're getting advertiser
and they're receiving money from this.
How would you stop that?
>> Any reaction?
But this doesn't address that?
>> Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit off point, right?
I mean, this is just focused on peer-to-peer networks.
Most of the commercial peer-to-peer networks
or a lot of them are--
>> They're long gone.
>> -- they're long gone, I mean,
they've been sued out of the existence.
>> In fact, this is-- my understanding is--
>> I mean, it's an interesting question
but really doesn't get to what distance.
>> Yeah, this is BitTorrent only, right?
BitTorrent is an open protocol that all of the major builds
of it are non-commercial in nature, right?
So, I mean, there are companies that make money off
of distributing BitTorrent client software
but not a ton of it.
So, yeah, I don't think this is directly addressed
by the policy.
>> Can I just-- I don't want to heartily agree with something
that Jeff said and that's about the trust issue
and Joe should smile because, I mean, this has been a lot
about my push about transparency and openness.
There is a lack of trust and it's a double-sided lack
of trust and that's why I think this system really has
to engage the public.
I mean I will give CCI credit before they launch,
they took the advice of the advisory board and they went
and did messaging and I think Joe spoke about it
in the first panel and focus groups
and learned a lesson that, you know,
the wagging finger is not the way to change social norms.
You can't call people thieves and pirates and expect them
to respect what you're asking them to do.
So, I mean, there is a huge trust gap and I think one
of the things that the CCI wants to do and this is, again,
the entity that's implementing the copyright alert system
but also wants to engage in copyright education is to try
to as much as possible close that trust gap.
I think that is job 1.
And you could see it from the reaction in this room.
>> I'll be curious to see the wording too of these notices
and the blue shirt and then the black shirts.
You can just hit your button.
>> Actually, he said that they are not working.
>> Oh.
>> The button is not working too well
so let's go to the line possible.
>> And for the web cast on.
So, in an ideal world, obviously,
in the name of free speech and everything,
I think that we would just be able to have an open system
that wasn't regulated in any way, shape or form but also
in the same way in an ideal world,
we also wouldn't have any copyright infringement
and people would be stealing things
from each other and whatnot.
So-- And Gigi, you said that you want to put kind of an emphasis
on positive-- you know, moving in a positive manner,
not just being angry about all of the stuff.
And going along with that,
I don't think it's completely unrealistic for some
of these people to want or desire a system where people
who are stealing things are accountable, but what I want
to ask you guys is what are your guys' ideas?
So, you know, obviously the burden is on these people
who have a lack or resources to be able to get themselves
out there while a lot of these companies have vast resources
behind and their legal teams and everything to be able
to enforce this and especially
in lobbying groups and everything.
So, in your guys' minds, what's a way
that these people could be held accountable
for overextending the power that they've been giving
through all these processes and whatnot.
And, you know, people like overflagging content
and users and things like that.
And how do you think a legal mechanism would work
or that's often a problem?
>> Well, there's actually a similar,
there was a bill similar to the one that Gigi was talking
about in Brazil that would've punished companies
for interrupting their version of fair use
with funny takedown notices from their version of DMCA.
So certainly, something that would counterbalance that kind
of unilateral power to sensor that exist
within private industry right now.
There's also interesting legislation that's been
put forward.
I think Gigi mentioned Ron Wyden before and/or she mentioned
Darrell Issa.
So Ron Wyden and Darell Issa have, you know,
pushed legislation like the OPEN act
which fortunately wasn't passed this year.
That would set forth a set of basic and internet bill
of rights for consumers or citizens or however you want
to think of us, that would say, "Well, okay,
we can pass these laws and we can create these policies
but they can't go past the certain threshold, right?
That threshold being equal participation
in the public sphere, equal access to information,
all these kinds of basic civil rights use,
civil liberties issues that we've been addressing up here.
So those two issues are key.
And then the third that I would mention is the industry has
actually had a lot of interesting ideas about how
to create business models that assume a plenitude
of information rather than trying to restrict information
and sell it on a bit by bit basis,
but they have self-imploded every time they have tried
to instantiate these models.
A great example, and I actually write about this is in my book,
having interviewed some of the principles was Chords which came
out of Warner Music group a few years ago.
It was a pep project by Edgar Bronfman
who was then the head of Warner.
And what he wanted to do was
to [inaudible] a license of the ISP level.
And it wasn't even a license.
It was a covenant not to sue for various legal reasons.
But the basic idea was charge the ISPs 5 bucks
that they would pass on to their consumers,
it will be virtually invisible to the enduser
and nobody would ever get sued
for any kind of infringement ever.
Now, a lot of people had issues with that and rightfully so,
but on the other hand, it would've also solved a lot
of problems, and it was not really given an opportunity
to thrive or fail in the marketplace largely
because it got torpedoed internally
by the legal department set the major labels themselves.
I mean, Warner could not sell a single other major label
on the plan or a single ISP at the end of 18 months.
And in fact, one of the great anecdotes that came
out of my research about that story was that one
of the meetings between the heads
of the 2 largest major labels never happened
because they couldn't get past an argument whose office it
would take place in, right?
So to me, the biggest obstacle
to the content industry being able to profit in the era
of ubiquitous information is their own self-immolation
and not obstinacy and not idiocy but rather structural resilience
to innovation and change.
>> At the risk of advertising on my own organization over
and over which of course I have to do,
go to internetblueprint.org.
We have 2 proposals, one that would essentially make it easier
to go after folks that send frivolous DMCA notices
and another that would allow folks to sort
of countersue for copyright abuse.
I just have to make one point about I don't see this system
as necessitating people lawyering up, okay,
and having to hire a lawyer, okay?
The appeals process is basically going to be a form,
and it's going to be implemented
by the American Arbitration Association which is, you know,
you can hardly get a more credible group, okay?
So-- and you know, I'm not necessarily--
sure I buy the digital divide argument.
I don't use Tor or VPN and I don't know how many--
I mean, you're talking about like the top of the top
of the technological elite and I guess I'm not one of them.
So, I think you're overstating a little bit, you know,
what kind of lawyering up people are going to do
and I think the goal and certainly one of my goal is try
to make the appeals process as simple as possible.
But the thing I don't really understand
and Molly discussed something
that you said before is would you prefer there's not an
appeals process?
I mean, with the notice and notice
or whatever it was called, or the prior of incarnation
of this notice system, there was no appeals process.
There was no due process, okay?
You just-- you got these notices and let's remind folks
under the terms of service of every single ISP,
you can get kicked off, okay?
I'm not happy either.
That is the one thing I did forget to say in my list
of grievances of what I was not crazy about in the MOU,
was I did want termination taken off the table.
But now, the major ISPs, most of them have said publicly,
we will not terminate our customers according
to this plan.
Do they want to kick their customers off?
Of course, they don't, and believe you me I get in battles
with ISPs all the time.
So, I mean, I think I do really caution people,
let's see how this thing is implemented before you pass
judgment on how it really, really works.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> Yeah, I just-- I wanted to say a couple of things
and then also respond here.
In building on something that Gigi has said earlier and, well,
actually, and you have mentioned the issue of trust.
I think part of the reason that there's such a suspicion
and a lack of trust is because this is a purely
private process.
And it's hard to feel confident that someone's going
to handle things appropriately if you have no ability
to hold them accountable if they don't or if they decide halfway
through to change what's going on.
So one of the things that's in response
to your question is some form of public oversight.
Now, we don't have to go all the way
to judicial review necessarily.
We don't have, I mean, part of the advantage of having a sort
of extra legal system is to make it A, more flexible, right.
When you try to deal with things like this
with legislation it's outdated, you know, half an hour
after you pass it, right?
So it's flexible, it can respond well,
but completely private I think exacerbate some
of the trust issues that people have in being confident
that they're grievances and concerns are going to be heard.
So, I would say that putting into place something
like here's the minimum that these kinds
of systems can't go beyond,
you can't terminate because [inaudible].
I would say, you know, doing that in domestic law,
we do have something to look at.
The International Human Rights Law, I think, does provides
for that Bill of Rights that you were talking about,
we could draw on that.
But being able, in a public fashion, to kind of set them
in those minimums, and I think that's not only relevant
to this debate but there's a number of different initiatives
where we're calling for more network management,
for more involvement, and to be able to just sort
of set a baseline would be really helpful.
And then the question about the, you know, would it be better
or not to have an appeal,
I think more process is always better.
I also teach the procedure, right?
[laughter] But what concerns me is that there's sort
of a tension between the state of educational purpose
of the project and the fact
that there are mitigation measures, right?
If it were just the education, then sending the notices, sure,
send the notices, tell people this is illegal.
I mean, I think from an educated standpoint,
simply telling people they're doing something that's illegal
or that somebody in their household is serves
that purpose very, very well.
But to tie it to a sanction or a mitigation measure, right,
to tie it to some kind of a consequence, I find that--
that does-- that isn't some tension with the state
of education on purpose.
And it's at that point where I want to throw more procedure
at it, right, because it's having negative consequence.
>> I think that's really right.
>> That is the point at which you get
at the mitigation stage is what you get [inaudible].
>> But that you also have the hassle stage.
We all know that just really, pardon me, nice people came here
but calling your cable company is a mitigation itself.
Being forced to deal with it, right, that's a mitigation.
But I want to emphasize on what everyone said.
Really importantly, I think that the discussion has to happen
at a level of principles.
That-- and I'll plug my books
as you plugged your organization and plug your book.
[laughter] Your class.
Is at the end, I come around and say
that we have had a discussion of principles about a right
to connect, a right to speak, a right to assemble and act,
that all bits created equal in the internet must remain open,
and we have threats to our internet folks,
not just from discussion like this,
this is a discussion [inaudible]
but it's far worse I would from government.
That's why I'm a little concerned
about government being an actor on this because look
at what's happening in the ITU, look at what's happening
across much of Europe, look at what's happening, Lord knows,
in China and elsewhere.
So, you know, I think that we, the people of the net, you know,
we have our [inaudible] process here.
It sounds like you, Gigi, are us.
>> Well, it's not enough, right?
>> Right. And so, that's the issue is we,
the us of the internet have to have a discussion at a level
of principles to talk about what it is we are protecting
in this new society we're building,
which goes back to your question.
If we have time, if I squeeze it in here
for one more and then get up.
>> If there are no questions then we can just take them all
real quick, and then let you all answer them, okay?
So--
>> I think we have one there, and I think we're on the time.
So, the earlier questions were mainly
for the previous panel, so.
>> [Inaudible] I just wanted to say
that I'm a little bit shocked by the disbalance
in the discussion, and I want to go back to the privacy issue
because I think what we're talking
about here is stole-- steal property.
So, the constant owners wanted to protect their property
and they wanted to become [inaudible]
for that, and that's normal.
On the other hand, the users is giving away a lot
of personal information which has a lot of value
which is monetized without knowing anything
about what's going on there.
So there is also stolen property from the individuals
which is absolutely not transparent, there's no way
to know where this is going and asking the question of the trust
that you were measuring.
It has to be balanced.
I mean it needs-- if we-- first, we got to have transparency.
It has to be both ways.
It has to be also, "What is my-- where is my information going,"
because otherwise I don't see how the trust can be
reestablished and yet the other thing is that it's--
well, it's-- what do I want to say?
Well, I think would just stop there.
>> Any reaction there?
>> Well, sure, I mean just on privacy.
I mean I think there are some questions about what happens
to the data that's collected and so forth but ultimately,
this does start with the user going
on to a public peer-to-peer network
and making files available to the general public and making
that IP address viewable that way.
So I think the information that you start with is information
that a user, by participating in this public forum,
has chosen to put out there.
So I think it's significant that that's--
you know, that's initially the information
and I was actually very glad that the way the program works,
that's the information that the content companies get.
They get the information that's available to anyone really
on the peer-to-peer network and that's what they give
to the ISPs and the ISPs do not share back with them
as I understand with any personal information.
>> But that's why I asked the question before,
the previous panel about-- so if I go through this process
and I don't have a lawyer and I'm not very sophisticated
and I say, "Well yeah, I share the stuff
but less now than before."
Is all of that discoverable if the content company chooses
to sue later and I just put myself in a position
of liability because, yeah, privacy--
not in this part of the process but there's no privacy then
in later parts of the process.
That's my concern.
Is there any answer to that in the--
I've entered into a process where I'm told that, "Gee,
it's all okay, it's cool.
It's just a discussion," but I've said the things
that could be used against me.
>> So my understanding is
that the agreement actually does contain a--
>> I'm sorry.
>> Is there a protection about this, let me ask again?
>> Could you speak up, Victoria?
>> Sure, and I asked about [inaudible] college.
If we want this to be happy to [inaudible] a normal subpoena
but whatever responses you did that's required
of the appeals process are only--
if not be used for anything--
>> Is that assured in there?
>> Yes, yeah.
>> That-- okay, that's what I'm asking.
>> That is in the agreement [inaudible].
[Multiple Speakers]
>> All right.
I think we're off the hook.
[laughter] So thank you,
thank you panel very much, thank you all.
And we move on.
[applause]
>> Thank you so much.
>> Wow, that was a great panel.
We actually had a couple minutes built in to our schedule
for a break but we just used it.
So we're not having a break
because that was too good to stop.
If you have to step out and take a break, please do quietly.
We're going to go ahead and move into the final panel
and actually, all of you could stay if you don't mind
because this final panel includes everyone.
So-- and what we're going to do here is my colleague,
Konstantinos Komaitis, is going to come back
and just facilitate this but we're going
to give everybody an opportunity to do a little wrap up
and I'll turn it over to Konstantinos.
[ Inaudible Discussion ]
>> Unfortunately, this line up doesn't facilitate [inaudible].
>> So I do want to call back the original panelists,
the first panelists to come up and take a seat please.
[ Inaudible Discussion ]
>> Okay, we only have one hour.
We need to-- well actually, less than one hour.
We need to be out of here by 6 o'clock so I thought
that instead of asking questions and questions and questions,
just to give the opportunity to each one of you basically
to have some-- to make some concluding remarks,
5-minute each I think will be fine.
The only one thing that I think I picked
up from today's discussion
which I thought was fantastic was that--
and what I heard the questions into the second panelists,
especially with Frank with the issue of trust.
And the issue of trust, we see it actually happening not only
in the context of intellectual property, it's in the issue
of privacy, security, even at the governance level.
So I would like to start with right here and ask, you know,
for some concluding the remarks
and if you can also address the issue of trust,
that would be great,
how basically the system will make sure that users are--
will be able to trust the system to make the right decisions
and move forward because we've all heard
that this is a far better idea compared at least to what we saw
at the level of SOPA and PIPA.
So please, you have the floor.
Thanks.
[ Pause ]
>> Okay. You know, I actually thought the dialogue
in that panel was very good and I understand the trust issue.
I think that's an important point.
On that, I guess there are 3 things I would say that we try
to build into this system that try to address that.
One is transparency and you saw that recently
where there was a concern expressed in I think a blog
or some kind of a thing on the internet saying that one
of the companies that was used to do the review
of the content companies tracking--
or monitoring system might have been some work
for the content community at some time as a lobbyist.
So we immediately talked about that
and said let's have another independent review
of the work that was done.
We have-- I don't think it has been selected yet
but we did immediately say, you know, that--
I didn't look that deeply at the allegation but the concern was,
"Look, it's out there and there's concerns
that have been built up on that so we need take a look at that
and do something quickly to make sure people know we're serious
about this."
So I think that does show we're serious about it.
Secondly, we did put into this system an advisory board.
Gigi's on it.
Some other advocates are on it too.
Obviously, that alone isn't enough but because we're going
to be very transparent, hopefully the Internet Society
and members here who've heard
about this will be helpful as well.
So hopefully the-- you know, the crowdsourcing
that we usually expect, I mean,
that will be a part of the process.
Certainly as the notices begin to go out,
I expect that there will be occasionally some people have
concerns raised in that process
and that'll be another learning tool for all of us.
So I think that's another part of it.
Third, David raised, that's Sohn, I think some good question
or concerns he had and one of the things he talked
about for example was the fact
that the system might actually not-- might be working that well
and we need to have some way to correct that and again,
we built in to the process a review
so it won't just be a one-time review of the monitoring system.
It'll be a regular review.
So we'll look at it again to say, "Is it still working,"
and part of that, we'll be taking that data and internally
at least looking at it and saying, "Is there something here
that shows there's a problem here?"
So I think on the trust area, we're trying to do--
we try to do as much as we could and recognize it's something
that people are, you know, see something that's unfamiliar
to some extent even though, again,
it's been out there for a while.
So we're going to have some time.
I think we need some time to actually make it work
and prove itself and I think that's the most I would
like to ask you to do is not trust
but actually give us some time to make it work
and earn the trust by actually making the process effective.
David also raised one other point
which I think is a good one
and I don't think there's a real answer to it but we're going
to try and that is how do you assure you reach the people?
One of the reasons that we have the notice system we have
with the-- including the pop-up and so forth is
because we do want to try to make as much effort as we can
to get the attention of people.
It's an education process and I do believe a lot
of the instances where these kinds of things happen are
in group homes where people are living together
and somebody has the account, the other folks are using it
and something's going on that the person
who has the account doesn't even know what's going on
and then certainly, it ends with parents and their kids.
So you know, the continuous process of sending
out the notices, the pop-up and the mitigation phase at the end,
again, is just to say, "Get your attention,
would you please acknowledge us either a yes or no"
and that I think is another way we're trying to make sure we get
through as much as we can.
There's no perfect system.
I agree with that and even the voicemails are going
to be saying to people I don't think they're going
to get to everybody either.
I know in my case [laughter] voicemail is sort
of last century.
I don't even check it as much as I used to so-- but it's, again,
an attempt to be as full--
as broad as we can in terms of making sure we get the notices
into people who need to know what's going on.
So I think those are the points that I've made.
The only other thing I would add, again,
is that I do think that, you know,
one of the things we were trying to do as we built this system is
to try to be as fair as we could and then putting
as many mechanisms as we could into it
that both make sure people are educated and have a chance
to go find out more about the process
and about copyright and so forth.
And find legal sources of copyright-- legal material.
And in fact, if we go to the CCI site when it gets fully up
and running you'll see that.
It's got a lot of notices, a lot of places where you can go
to get contents and so forth.
So it really is education focused
and I hope it makes a difference.
>> Thank you very much.
Fernando.
>> Thank you.
And I thought that the prior panel was excellent
and also again, want to thank you
for having us here, Paul and David.
It's important not only be here to talk and explain ourselves
but also to be accountable to you and to get the feedback.
I was furiously writing down notes.
There's no way that I can
in five minutes follow Link who's been at this for a while
and is very eloquent,
and I think you also had some very good points.
But I will say the following which I was scribbling
down while Link was talking.
So if I repeat them, you know.
This is a process-- part of the processes getting your feedback,
part of the process is also hearing from you
as we are rolling this out.
We want to get it right because it's important, we know,
it's important to our customers that we get it right
because they rely on us and they're relying on us
to provide a service that they value
and that's important to them.
We are here trying to make it work, we expect to learn.
And I think that it's important that people understand
that because this is not
about having a perfect system and imposing it.
The MOU expressly provides for revisions and for feedback,
for data gathering, for education
of the participants as well.
And it's important for me to tell you, it's important
for my company to tell you that we take
that seriously, we expect to learn.
The second thing is a long the lines of learning.
Again, this is an educational program.
I heard a lot of comments about extreme cases.
We're not trying to target extreme cases here.
We are trying to educate the vast, you know,
majority of internet users
for whom a cultural change is a hard thing
and to be constructive about it.
So we're not trying to catch the person who, you know,
is an extreme use case, difficult to track down,
they can get around it, they're not going
to be convinced, hard hearted.
This is about education and again, you know,
at the end of the process, we're not planning as a result of this
to terminate customers.
We're hoping the result is that we have more educated customers.
And then finally, a point about language.
I notice, I think it's great, you know, that Gigi pointed this
out and I was following a little bit of the Twitter back
and forth about how it's not constructive to talk in terms
of pirates and thieves.
And I agree with that.
I don't think that that is constructive at all.
I also think it's important in engaging all of these that,
you know, we don't talk about condemning businesses.
We're trying to do things in a moderated way, especially,
in an environment where we can all agree that there are,
you know, far worse consequences, far worse outcomes
and trying to cooperate.
You know, we're not trying to be models of the best
and the brightest but we also would appreciate
if we got some understanding for attempting to do what's
in our customers' and our business' best interest
in a constructive way, which includes this feedback
and I appreciate it, thanks.
>> Thank you very much, Fernando.
Jill, thanks.
>> Thank you.
So I just want to echo what both Fernando and Link have said
about how valuable it has been to be here
and to listen to this dialogue.
And to, you know, follow what's been asked and said
on the internet during it.
And I think that the level of skepticism
that we hear is neither surprising nor unwarranted.
And we are-- as my colleagues have said, you know,
really hope that one of the things that this audience
and other audiences can do, can to some degree hold judgment
in abeyance until the program is up and running which we hope
that will be very, very soon, because we do hope
that the proof is in the pudding.
And, you know, again, we don't have that level of trust
at the moment among the various constituencies here
and therefore, asking for trust is not probably the best way
to proceed but sort of waiting and watching
and giving feedback, and hoping
that not only do we do it right the first time
but that we continue to hone the system.
But from my perspective, the more important piece that I want
to talk about here which has not been the subject
of this discussion is really CCI, the organization that I'm
in charge of because we have two mandates and one is
to help get the copyright alert system up and running,
but for me the more important and the more long lasting
and hopefully, the more far reaching aspect
of what we're trying to do is to engage
in a productive education effort around these issues.
That doesn't mean to find a new way to preach
about the production of copyright.
But it does mean talking about being, you know, an ethical user
of the internet, what is it, what are--
as the internet rose up.
How can we all engage not just in the area
of copyrighting content, but across the whole internet,
what are the expectations of engaging in ethical way?
How do we describe that and how do we begin that dialogue
with the bunch of different stakeholders?
The other is that we are in a process of partnering
with a couple of non-profit organizations
around creating curriculum, curricula for kids starting
in Kindergarten, about, you know, what is creativity mean,
what is the value of having some control
over your creative content, and what are the, you know,
the rights and responsibilities around that.
And so, you know, my challenge is to both take a system that is
about identifying allegedly negative behavior,
and trying to change that behavior.
But doing so under a rubric of messaging
and educational materials and interfacing with consumers,
and partnership with our advisory board in a way
that sort of evolves this social norm, I talked about earlier
to something that allows everyone to win, you know,
consumers get the content they want in a compelling format.
And either for free in many cases or the reasonable price,
in a variety of different, you know, venues and on a variety
of different devices and whenever,
and wherever they want it.
And our expectations
around content are 21st century expectations are not the
expectations that I have, you know, and then down stairs
with 55,000 CDs in my collection.
You know, people-- our kids growing up today, how--
are creating different expectations and growing
up in a different world.
So I hope that in addition to focusing,
I'm getting the copyright alert system, right?
This group with input from a variety
of different constituencies can also get the advocacy
and education around the importance
of these issues, right?
>> Thank you very much, Jill.
Victoria?
>> Thank you for your time and for listening about the MOU
and the copyright alert system.
We appreciate your feedback and do take it seriously.
I will appreciate the feedback
that this group has given us in past.
I'm sure that will give you, will give us again the future.
We're trying to make it work.
We're trying to be sensitive to the privacy concerns,
and other concerns that are raised.
We'll make mistakes possibly?
We hope that they will be identified and corrected.
Our goal is to get users to think
about what are legitimate alternatives to music.
We do attack those music legitimately, to that and RIAA
and NARM other group, I believed announced today,
a website called www.whymusicmatters.com.
It is a guide to license music services in the United States.
It is not all of them but it is several of the ones
that have been licensed by at least three of the major labels
in the United States, we hope that you'll use
that as a resource and thinking about where you'd like to go,
to get legitimately music.
Thank you.
>> Thanks, Vicky.
As I heard in the last panel,
there is a lot interesting discussion about a lot
of perfectly legitimate issues involving human rights,
involving privacy, involving fair use.
I just want to-- I don't want to repeat what everyone has said,
but I just to very quickly address several things
that I heard from the last panel just
to take clarify what the system is about, and what is not about.
First is mash ups.
My colleagues and I at the movie studios have endlessly
interesting fair used debates about what sort of mash
up are fair use and which or not.
This system, does not involved in mash ups.
The system is meant to identify people who share entire copies
of movies or television shows or so on.
Each-- if it works as design,
it will not catch anything remotely resembling a mash up.
If we misidentify something and accidentally insnare a mash up,
I'm sure we will hear about it very soon.
[laughter] Second was--
>> Nice guys.
>> I have no doubt we will hear it.
Second thing is there was mention
of Deep Packet Inspection.
This system has nothing to do with Deep Packet Inspection.
The only thing we will be inspecting is the shared folders
that people-- that is installed on somebody's computer
when they join one of these peer-to-peer networks
and basically, decide that they're going
to "share" their files with everybody else,
potentially millions of other anonymous people
on the internet.
This is something that we could look at today,
something that we could look at last year,
something that we could look at whether
or not this whole copyright alert system works.
It has nothing to do with Deep Packet Inspection.
And the third thing I just want
to address again very briefly is privacy 'cause this may have
gotten buried but I just thought that it's worth reemphasizing.
Throughout this system when we identify those
who are distributing files through peer-to-peer system,
we will not know their names.
We will not know any identifying information.
The only thing that we all know is the IP address
which again anybody in this room could figure
out by just joining a peer-to-peer network.
We will not even know their names
or other identifying information about them
if they choose to file an appeal.
There's one narrow exception to that which got mentioned before
but again, [inaudible] repeating is
that if somebody says 20th Century Fox authorized me just
to distribute Avatar through peer to peer and they say,
here's a document that says I could do something, it says,
you know, Ben Sheffner, you know, they--
I say, oh you know what, I have a letter from Ron Wheeler
of 20th Century Fox saying that Ben Sheffner has the authority
to distribute this through peer to peer and I submit
that as part of the appeal.
20th Century Fox has a right to look up and see
in their files whether oh yes, of course,
we actually have a record of having done that.
Whether like--
>> Unless it's fraudulent.
>> Unless it's-- and they have every right to challenge it
and say it's fraudulent.
That's the one extremely narrow to the point
of nonexistent scenario
where somebody's name could actually be resolved.
This system respects privacy.
In 99.99 percent of the cases,
the person's identity will never ever be shared
with the copyright.
>> Thank you.
Ron, please.
>> Rather than repeat some of the excellent comments
that have made and can make one additional point
that I don't believe has been made.
There was on the last panel a discussion
about whether it was necessary or appropriate
to have mitigation measures in addition to the notices
and isn't it sufficiently educative to just send notices.
Well, you know what, one of the purposes of this program
from my perspective is actually to find
out what is the correct answer to that, to that statement
because certainly from our perspective,
the concern is always been about on notice and notice programs
and as you may notice, there's going to be one in Canada
as a result of the new Canadian copyright law
that was just passed over this summer.
Is that they do not have educational value
because the recipients of the notices are fully aware
that there are no consequences to them.
So the concern we've always had is if you get a notice
that you know will be followed by exactly nothing
and it says have a nice day at the end,
you may not change your behavior.
And therefore, and if that's true,
then we would be seeing lots of notices
that weren't responded to.
On the other hand, if you have a program
where there are reasonable mitigation measures
and there's been a debate about what measures that's reasonable
or and which ones are not.
But if there is a program where I'm told that here's a notice
and if you keep getting these and don't change your behavior,
then something will happen to you
or to the account which you're using.
Then, our belief has always been that you're more likely
to change your behavior in response to the notice,
in other words, to indicate
that you have been successfully educated.
But, you know, that time will tell of what I--
what we are really hoping to see from this is that one
or two notices results in change of behavior.
That our goal would be
that their mitigation measures would never be necessary 'cause
it shows that that notice alone is sufficient.
And believe me, we will take that into account.
We know how controversial mitigation measures are,
the fringe programs have been mentioned a few times.
It's obviously a very strict series of measures there.
Actually, no one has lost their internet access
but someone did receive a fine last-- within the last month.
So, we know how controversial if they turn out not
to be necessary to result in changes of behavior.
Well believe me, we will forego mitigation measures
but that day has not arrived yet.
And, again, I don't think it is a matter of trust us
or trust the program or anything like that, but wait and see.
Let's all wait and see and learn together.
Thank you.
>> Thanks Ron.
>> So, thank you all
for spending three hours talking about this.
I think it's been really great and I know I've learned a lot.
So I want to put a pox on the houses
of both the ISPs adn the movie companies 'cause
in [inaudible] policy battles, I mean, we were, you know,
up against them and they don't always work
in the most transparent environment.
I mean, they're used to smoky rooms and they're, you know,
used to, you know, talking to legislatures one on one.
And somebody said to me and I don't remember who it was,
well this is a private agreement.
It's between companies.
So, you know, who has the right to complain?
It was essentially the implication.
And I said this is not your typical commercial agreement.
This is the one that is heavily scrutinized.
You know, there was, I wouldn't say there was--
the beginning I think there was the heavy hand of government.
You can thank your Governor Cuomo for that.
But in spite a lot of conspiracy theories the White House really
didn't have a whole lot to do with this
but they were certainly kept in the loop and they continued
to be kept in the loop.
So there is some sort of government aspect to this.
And I think as a result, I think there needs
to be serious oversight.
I mean, the implementation
of an advisory board I think is one important step.
So this is not a commercial agreement
like all other commercial agreement.
It is one that has oversight and is one
that frankly needs your help, okay?
So I'm asking you guys, right here and now,
when this thing kicks off, if there are problems,
you need to let me know.
You need to let Jerry Berman know and Jules Polonetsky,
my other colleagues
on the advisory board 'cause that's what we're here for.
We're here to make sure this thing gets implemented fairly.
So, you know, we talked a lot about trust.
We talked a lot about energy.
You know, put your energy into making sure--
this thing is not going away, okay?
As much as some people in this room might like that
to happen, it's not going away.
I love the folks that say, you know,
call your broadband provider
and tell them you'll go somewhere else.
I mean, that's the other half of my work.
They take nobody else to go to.
So let's try to make this work and please do use me
and the other folks on the advisory board as mechanisms
to make sure that this thing is implemented fairly.
Thanks.
>> Thank you Gigi.
>> I would reiterate everything that Gigi just said
which I thought was right on the money.
On top of that, I would close with two quick points.
I'm very skeptical as I've already indicated
about this system working.
Number one, because I think that BitTorrent and P-to-P model
as we think about it is really last decade's answer
to this issue and the range of ways
in which people share content freely licensed to unlicensed
to otherwise has becomes such a kaleidoscopic variety
that trying to close down one channel, you know,
is like trying to stop people from getting into New York
by closing the Holland Tunnel, right?
There are so many other ways.
You're going to end up or, you know, to use another metaphor.
It's like the, you know,
the Dutch boy is sticking his fingers in the *** and hoping
that it will hold off the flood that way.
So that's a serious problem that you guys haven't addressed
and the reason that you haven't addressed this
because it can't be addressed, right?
The number of channels is continuing to proliferate.
The only way that that can be stopped is
if there are some very severe mitigation measures
at the network level, which clearly for political reasons
and ethical reasons, the ISPs
and the content industry is not willing to pursue at this point.
And that's a very good thing for all of us.
But I also just and I-- nobody has mentioned this yet.
I think it's very important.
Over and over and over again, it's been pointed
out that the purpose of this policy is education.
And it's not entirely clear to me that the problem here is
that the consumer base is uneducated, right?
Now, the cynical response to that is to say, well,
the consumers have been educated by 40,000 people getting sued
by the RIAA, tens thousands more getting sued by the MPAA.
All kinds of one after another keystone cop style, you know,
shooting yourself in the foot, public relations disaster,
that's the cynical response.
But there's also another response to it
which I think is equally important.
You know, when I do these surveys
of people's activities online,
I also ask them open-ended questions
like what are your feelings about remixes
and mashups and things like that.
And what I get out of that is this really interesting glimpse
into the ethical frameworks that people use when they try
to make sense of these emerging cultural practices.
And when I first started doing this particular set
of research back in the mid 2000s, 2006,
I think, was the first survey.
Copyright was completely off of respondents' radar.
So it was a wonky legal issue that if anybody knew anything
about it, whatever they knew is wrong, right?
When I refielded the survey most recently, about a year
and a half ago, copyright rose to the top of the level
of concerns reported by respondents
about their activities online.
And the primary way that they address copyright was
acknowledging that it is a broken regulatory system
that does not address the ethical frameworks
that they have developed for themselves
around the disposition of cultural information online.
I'm not saying that we need to tear down copyright
and rebuild it from the ground up.
But what I'm saying is that systems that begin
with the premise, the consumers, you know, if we can only get
to them and explain to them that what they're doing is wrong,
I think that is a policy that's destined to fail
because consumers have, not just the geeky types,
but in very large numbers, majorities perhaps,
have already made up their minds about these issues and have kind
of moved on and developed their own systems
for parsing right from wrong.
And until you engage those ethical frameworks
that they've actually developed for themselves, you're not going
to have a persuasive argument, even assuming you managed
to get their attention for 10 seconds.
>> Thank you.
David.
>> So, as I said, as I said, initially, I guess,
my overall read is that if this thing works as advertised,
it doesn't have to have dire consequences,
I do see in this agreement what looks to be a good faith effort
to build in some safeguards and some process.
As has been said multiple times here, I don't think
that means people should just trust it'll all work,
we're going to have to wait and see, we're going to have
to watch it carefully.
I think one of the reasons that one could be optimistic
at the outset is that they chose to bring in people like Gigig
for the advisory board, right?
They could have easily stocked an advisory board with a bunch
of yes men or yes women who share the perspective
of the industry to put the agreement together,
and they chose not to do that.
They brought in people not just Gigi but also Jerry Berman
who is the founder of my organization.
They brought in folks who are going to be willing
to ask hard questions and that is at least a positive sign
for how it might go forward on implementation.
In terms of effectiveness and this question of whether,
you know, does education really helps solve the problem?
Are users really open to being educator in this topic
in a way it would actually reduce infringement.
It's an interesting question.
I guess, my view is that it's worth thinking
about what success would look like for this program.
And I guess, to me, I assume
that there is some substantial set of consumers out there
for whom that's absolutely right.
They have lots of different channels
for possible infringements,
the education here won't affect them much one way or the other.
They either might move to something that isn't peer
to peer or they'll ignore the notices or what have you.
My hypothesis would be that there is, though,
also a substantial subset of users
who either don't fully understand copyright law,
don't know that their behavior on some
of these networks is observable, or don't know
that it's really the 15 year old
in the house who's doing all this, and that,
if the parents were to find out what junior has been doing,
they would do something to try to rein that in.
So, I guess that's why I'm optimistic
that there is the potential
for some reduction in infringement here.
Certainly, it only-- the program only goes to those folks
who are amenable to being-- to having their behavior changed
through some education and through more information,
and that is, I suspect some, but obviously,
not all of the population.
>> Thank you, David.
>> Jeff, would you like to say something?
>> So, I'm gratified to have created the trending hash tag
of the day and trust.
And I think that does remain an issue.
But I still think there's a bigger issue even than that.
And I'm not sure we know what business we're in.
We certainly don't know what the internet is yet,
and we're trying to regulate it and define it by the legacy.
I'm fond to point out that Elizabeth Eisenstein,
a key scholar in Guttenberg,
says that we didn't really know what the book was.
[Inaudible] 50 years after it was created.
There's an area of great creativity here,
and that goes also to the business models.
In my end of the media and content business,
the news business which has been, of course,
terribly disrupted, I'm coming to argue to my folks
that maybe we're not in the content business at all,
that we should see ourselves in the service business,
the relationship business and data about that,
and that's something that Google and Facebook understand
that we don't understand.
We still think we make a thing because that's what we have
to do to get our service out there before.
And as an author of sorts, I've done two books,
either of which I will sell you, I will also say
that I don't make most of the money from that.
I make money from getting some speaking gigs and things
like that, so I really need not so much copyright
but a credit right that when my ideas get
out there what I want is provenance and links back to me.
An ethical behavior on the internet is to link this
and just please spread my-- what I say, agree with it or disagree
with it, nicely please, and link back to me and give provenance
to me so that I can then get credit in the conversation.
I can be part of the conversation,
I can maybe get a gig out of out of it, whatever I choose to do
to exploit that and I think thus, we see people
like me finding new business models because we have to,
and I would say with respect to the entertainment industry
that some bright kid in the garage will,
by God or in something called YouTube,
will create entertainment and create models
that take advantage of abundance over scarcity.
And that do not try to make a business model anymore
out of fighting your customers, fighting people who like you
and just as GGS [phonetic] asked in the internet to be positive
and to go toward new things and new fair use and such,
I would challenge you in your industries,
and I used to be part of it, to be positive in the sense
of saying how can we find ways and you may yes,
you will disrupt the business models you have,
you will disrupt the windows of distribution you have,
you will *** off some people as you already have,
but if you give your fans and these are people who want
to watch your stuff, if you give your fans the ability
to buy your stuff when and where and how they want to I have
to believe that is the key to business success.
It's disruptive, well welcome to the club.
I can tell you about it from the newspaper business
that we're disrupted and that by trying to protect the old,
it didn't work worth a damn.
And what we have to do is change our business,
disrupt our own business and I will say
as a university person what I'm concentrating
on right now is a strategy process for my school
because of accreditation that I can't stand.
And what we're trying to do right now is
to imagine our own disruption, imagine the school
that would disrupt us and destroy us.
We're only six years old.
Well, I would say the same challenge exist
for all of us here.
This is the internet, this is the new reality,
disrupt yourselves, don't just protect the past.
>> Thank you, Jeff.
We have 5 to 10 minutes for some last minute comments
but before I open the floor, I will just like to say
that we believe at the Internet Society,
that multi-stake holder dialogue and I've mentioned
that before it's very important and I was very glad to hear Jill
in particular mentioning and everybody else mentioning
that this system envisions some sort of dialogue, it was based
on the dialogue that's why they brought people like Gigi
that everybody was mentioning.
Now the challenge is to continue this dialogue and it is
to find a way to make the system work and to hear everybody,
businesses, the ISPs, I'm sure that this is a learning curve
and many issues will emerge, other issues will be resolved,
some issues will not be resolved so the challenge right now is
to identify ways in order to bring everybody together
and to make this a more inclusive framework.
As I said, this discussion today for me is just the beginning
and we as the internal society we will facilitate
and continue having these discussions.
And with that note, I would like to ask some final remarks.
I know that Johnny [phonetic] also wants to say something
so please identify yourself.
Thanks.
>> My name is Daniel Resler [phonetic] and one of the things
that I see kind of missing from the panel right now is okay,
so we got the music industry and the movie industry,
but one of the big content providers nowadays is video
games and interactive entertainment.
And I want to ask, have they been approached because I know
that they're making a lot of innovative techniques
and business models to get that content
in an easy serviceable manner out to the public.
Have they been contacted and asked for advice on how
to implement something like this,
for example the Steam network
that Valve Software runs is a very successful marketplace
for proprietary content.
And so, that's what I want to ask the panel who are, I guess,
actually implementing the system,
not necessarily the advocates.
>> We do work ESA,
the Entertainment Software Association,
that represents most of the video game makers.
So, we talk to them fairly often
about what are content protection measures that work
or don't work in their industry
and also what are legitimate distribution models
that work and don't work.
Today, the US record industry is
over 50 percent digital in sales.
We have been highly disrupted by the internet.
The labels are working very hard to come
up with new distribution models over the internet.
If you go to whymusicmatters.com,
you'll see that there are over 50 different business models,
stores right now that will sell you or give you access to music
in a variety of different matters where you want,
when you want, how you want it.
That doesn't even include the
over 2,000 online music radio stations right now like Pandora,
iHeartRadio, Sirius XM, Jazz, you know, web casting as well
as the satellite radio and others.
>> Johnny?
>> I want to talk about well, about sharing.
You mentioned sharing
and something I heard Stewart Copeland of The Police say once
about music and he said, "It's not about me, it's about us."
And so, sharing is a very natural thing and by trying,
you know, by trying to inhibit it, you know,
it's an unnatural act and it would seem
that it would be better to like find ways
of exploiting it rather than restricting it.
Getting more onto the point of sharing, I heard you say
that the policies defined you want to find what--
you're going to find people shared folders, enter this,
and find what's in them, and the people who are sharing.
So I'm wondering if you could just clarify how the policy
affects people who are sharing
or just people who are downloading.
And so, you know, for instance, with BitTorrent,
you can throttle your seeding as against your downloading
so if one were to like you know, throttle your seeding
down to zero, you'll not be sharing anything.
Would that be some kind of defense?
>> When MarkMonitor is, you know, busy scanning the internet
and looking-- scanning these peer-to-peer networks,
what they-- and when they look inside somebody's share folder,
what they are seeing is somebody distributing.
>> Excuse me, but with BitTorrent,
you do not see people share folders.
All you see is what files they are BitTorrenting.
And you cannot tell whether they're actually uploading those
files unless you're-- unless they actually upload to you.
>> And well that's what they're doing.
[Simultaneous Talking]
>> Where we're talking about BitTorrent.
>> Well, in BitTorrent, when you're in a swarm,
my understanding is you're simultaneously uploading
and downloading unless you throttle yourself,
what you're talking about.
And, the MarkMonitor program
for the BitTorrent protocol is looking at the swarm and looking
at the distribution from the swarm.
So, it is looking at distribution.
>> And it is in fact downloading and depending
on whether it was the first time this particular file had
been detected.
They actually are downloading either all or part of it
to verify in fact that this person--
>> So if you've set your seeding to zero which you can,
you're presumably immune from MarkMonitor--
>> If you're not distributing then you won't be detected.
>> Oh sorry.
If you were just plainly downloading [inaudible].
[ Inaudible Remarks ]
>> Thanks, Charlie.
>> There's nothing to worry about.
[Laughter]
>> You're good.
You're all good.
>> Yeah, you know how I am.
I'm going to just restate what some things that Aram
and Jeff brought up earlier.
Let's look into the mind of our pirate
who are all really mad, supposedly.
This is a person who likes your content that you're creating
and they are-- they're not--
they may be stealing but they are
out of packet donating disk space and bandwidth
and they are acting as a volunteer
to distribute your content.
You pay people to distribute your content
but you got people volunteering to do this.
So, it seems to me to that you need another business model
where you can handle the royalty problem
but not alienate those people and get them to work for you.
>> I'll take that 'cause a number
of people have been getting this advice on business models.
With all due respect, I think we know a little bit more
about running our business than people,
the average man on the street.
Whether-- if we're forced to change our business model
because the old one that delivered returns
to our shareholders of a certain amount, of course we will.
We have entire teams of people creating new business models
as Vicky talked about, same is true in the movie business.
But we actually have to be the ones to tell our shareholders
that it's a good idea for them to own stock in our company.
So just saying things like oh well, the ad supported.
Ad-supported movies, it's a great idea.
We'll never make another Avatar with ad-supported movies.
You have to pencil it out and this is our business.
So, look, we're not against changing our business.
We've changed our business a million times over the years,
not as fast as people want
but there's always a reason why we decided not
to do one thing or another.
And that's true, it's the nature of capitalism.
You can object to capitalism but that's-- the shareholders--
>> Oh come on.
>> What do you mean?
>> Come on, if people are trying to think--
listen, this is the time when they're new--
how's your newspaper business working, sir?
Great, isn't it, right?
If people have suggest this for you in your business
and say things and you just dismiss them 'cause you're
so much--
>> I did not.
I did not dismiss them.
I just said we probably know a little bit more
about running a newspaper business
than that the average person in the street.
>> Oh, it's going great.
[Laughter]
>> Okay, it's going great.
Are you going to guarantee we're going to make more money
if we follow your advice?
>> I don't know, but I know there are different
models [inaudible].
>> Of course there are different models.
We can give away our products for free.
>> Okay.
>> And we put out a tip jar but that-- yeah, seriously.
Do people think their-- those are-- [Simultaneous Talking]
>> You're dismissing--
>> I'm not dismissing anything.
I'm only saying, please cut us some slack.
You don't have to trust us.
It's not about trust but please understand
that we are not inherently opposed in new business models
but we do insist that they--
they pencil out and there's nothing wrong with that,
I make no apologize-- apologies for saying that they have
to pencil out for us and for our shareholders.
>> But that's not--
>> Sorry, we're running out of time
and there are a couple of other comments.
So I'm sorry to be cutting on--
>> If I can be brief in it.
I won't bring up [inaudible] his claim
that the VCR was going to--
[ Inaudible Discussion ]
>> Are you sure?
Are you sure you don't want to bring it up?
>> I don't want to bring that up.
I want to apologize for being flipped earlier but let me try
and make it more explicit what I was trying to get across when--
is that you, the content industry has now is asking
people to restrict the way they use their internet connection
and not allow them to share wirelessly
with their neighborhood, with people on the street.
They're asking for that.
In exchange, they're not-- there's nobody that has brought
up the idea that maybe we should examine life
of the author plus 70 years as a ridiculously long term
for copyright which was not how it--
the copyright system evolved.
This is not a natural system.
This is a manmade system.
And so, this notion of fairness, it just seems--
we're already talking about an end game
which seems reasonable given where you started from but from
where I sit seems wholly unreasonable.
>> Can I just-- thanks in reactions but this is
about the copyright alert system so please try
to limit your comments on the system--
>> Internet blueprint proposes rolling
that copyright terms, sign up for it.
And be active, be active on the Hill
where these changes can actually be made.
>> Hi, my name is Jay Saltzburger [phonetic]
and I have occasionally sent an email
for the past 40 years, maybe more.
I'm getting old.
Okay, I don't know anything
about the proposal except what I read late last night
when I was alerted into this panel.
I probably am misunderstanding something.
The proposal is that I ask peace would look inside my packets
and read what's inside-- that's wire tapping.
Oh, wait a second.
I feel much better.
Wait, let me finish this sentence.
So you're just going to do traffic analysis.
>> No.
>> That's all?
>> No.
>> Well then, how possibly can you tell whether
or not somebody is perhaps committing copyright
infringement by sending me some bootilicious video I got
about 10 years ago?
You know, how do you tell if you don't violate and guess what,
they haven't all been repealed, the wire tap laws.
That's all.
>> As I understand it, as a peer-to-peer user--
>> Right.
>> I am voluntarily going onto the network--
>> Right.
>> And voluntarily exposing my IP address--
>> Sure.
>> And--
>> And the files.
>> And distributing files--
>> Right.
>> To the public.
>> Right. And you might commit a copyright violation in the way
that [inaudible], somebody
from the Englobulators secret police slash copyright violators
snare system asks you for something
which you don't have a license to redistribute
and then they go to court.
And then you say, this person has committed a copyright
violation by sending me this thing
that is not freely licensed, that's the mechanism, right?
I'm following what you just said and I misunderstood
if that was-- so how do you know
that somebody might be committing copyright violation
without wiretapping?
Why is it okay to wiretap?
>> This is actually--
that question has actually been mitigated and it's--
[inaudible] write a privacy
when you're basically creating this file, exposing it--
>> Well, then we really need to get people more encrypt
so we can get together and overthrow this government.
Don't be ridiculous.
The United States has a lady in the harbor, right?
And the people came over here
because they wouldn't get the knock after midnight and come in
and then take them away or beat them to death on the spot.
As far as I can tell, copyright violation doesn't deserve--
they destroy the internet.
>> Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for being here until this late
and I will just give the floor now to Paul
for some concluding remarks.
Thanks.
[ Inaudible Remarks ]
>> This has been really an outstanding event.
I hope that everyone has found it to be very educational.
I certainly have.
We have some really--
>> It's been educational for me.
[Laughter]
>> It has, especially a lot of the questions,
the participation from the audience.
By the way, we've had great online viewership
through the entire event.
So we've reached a large audience with this.
We're going to be archiving this.
It's going to be subtitled.
So, this will be very helpful to anyone
that has questions going forward about this system.
We would like to follow up with you all at a future point
in time, maybe after this system has been fully launched
and operational just to touch base
and see how things are going.
I think that would be very appropriate.
I've already got interest from Washington, D.C. Chapter
or San Francisco Bay Chapter, so I'm not sure
where the venue will be but you can count on it that we're going
[ Inaudible Discussions ]